ABSTRACT

Abstract

Nigeria adopted electronic voting technology in 2011 as a redemptive electoral reform away from the perpetually vulnerable and inept traditional manual electoral system. However, acceptance of the new technology could not be taken for granted as such an electoral change could not be any fruitful unless it was well received by all primary stakeholders. As such, this study sought to assess the impact of acceptance of the electronic technology on performance of elections especially in the event of a knowledge lacuna in previous analyses of Nigeria’s recent electoral progress. To ensure more recent and in-depth analysis, the study was particularly limited to the 2015 general elections and selected states in the country, namely Bauchi State, Edo State, Enugu State, Kaduna State, Lagos State and Niger State. The study adopted a quantitative and qualitative approach for the methodology designed to collect and analyse data from a study sample of 265 respondents selected from the six States. The main findings were that the level of election performance of the 2015 general elections was high in much of Nigeria (x¯= 3.34; s= 1.11), despite some reservations in some parts of the country. According to statistical and qualitative reports, this was significantly attributed to the fact that the electoral technology was fairy accepted among political players, widely accepted by the electorate and attracted relative faith from the general public in most of the States of study. In light of the study findings it was concluded that increase in the level of acceptance of the technology would increase level of election performance, and vice versa. It was therefore recommended that electoral stakeholders particularly INEC and SIEC should adopt several strategies to maintain and where necessary improve on social acceptance of the technology for a consistently better election performance.