Anambra ICT Agency Boss Hails Soludo for Introducing e-governance, says Initiative Made Rigging Difficult

By Praise Chinecherem

Anambra ICT Agency has expressed appreciation to Governor Chukwuma Soludo for his willingness to introduce technology to governance and enhancing public sector efficiency through the agency.

Managing Director, Mr Fred Agbata who stated this in a media parley said the technology deployed made rigging and manipulation of election results difficult and easily exposed during the just concluded governorship election in the state.

He also commended Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for deployment and application of cutting edge technology which made the job of observers less cumbersome.

According to him, technology played a major role in the outcome of the election, including predicting possible number of votes per local government with high accuracy.

While conducting reporters around the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) Command and Control Centre set up by the agency weekend, Agbata said the Agency were confident Gov. Chukwuma Soludo would win before the election.

He said the result announced by INEC approximated the research based predictions of the centre managed by Geeks and Founders Alliance for Soludo (GEFAS), an ICT driven campaign group.

“Through the centre, Soludo reached no fewer than 200,000 Anambra voters directly through phone calls initiated by 50 agents from the Command and Control Centres set up in Awka and in Isuofia.

“GEFAS obtained data from the field and furnished the Soludo campaign organisation, with feedback which shaped its campaign messages, campaign schedule and general strategy.

“We were able to determine the voting sentiment of the people, their reservation about the government, what would inform their voting choices and political party affiliation,” he added.

According to ICT Agency boss, GEFAS deployed a mobile Tech hub with which Anambra people enjoyed free Internet wifi at all campaign venues consuming 27.5 terabytes in the process.

“Within six months, GEFAS was able to initiate 200,000 calls to generate data from the Anambra electorate.

“Our call centre started with 21 agents and later expanded to 50 across the Local Government Areas and two Command and Control centres.

“This enabled us to get voter sentiment and perception at the grassroots, data was processed daily, feedback improved messaging while our C and C centre served as a laboratory for data collection and processing,” he said.

Agbata further revealed the election situation room dashboard was highly efficient predicting turnout, party distributions and final outcome correctly with minimal margin of error.

“We predicted the possible number of votes per local government with high accuracy.

“The technology deployed made rigging and manipulation of election results difficult and easily exposed,” he added.

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