…As members vote manually
Another move by the House of Representatives to use electronic voting for the 1999 Constitution Review Amendments failed Wednesday as the newly installed NigComSat Ipod disappointed the lawmakers forcing them to resort to manual voting after three hours of failed attempts.
Nigcomsat had hurriedly installed the Ipod electronic voting system to replaced the electronic system already installed for the chamber which the Senate used last week.
The electronic register in the chamber of the House has stopped working for over two years, but the leadership of the House did nothing to rectify the problem.
It was not until the Senate used it for its voting last week that the House was jolted to repair it.
NigComSat was brought in as a fire brigade approach to salvage the situation when it was discovered that it would not only take a very long time to get the register repaired, but it would also gulp huge amount of money to put it back to use.
After an executive session, the chamber opened at about 10:35 a.m.
At about 11:45 a.m., Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, speaker of the House, urged members, who were yet to register their presence, to go and sign the register on the table of their respective parties.
It was about this time that NigComSat was given the floor to commence the process of electronic voting.
It started with the accreditation of members, which took nearly two hours to complete before.
By this time, it was obvious that members could not vote, using the electronic tablets that were sourced and installed by NigComSat a few days ago.
Tambuwal, who apologised for the ineffective devices, hinted that the House would resort to manual voting.
The lawmakers carried out the clause-by-clause voting, using a document that had each member’s name, constituency, party, state, signature and date identified on the cover.
The voting ended at about 3 p.m., but as at the time of filing in this report the collations were still going on.
