Oo Nwoye and Ozo Omosigho, two tech executives, announced the launch of Collate, an open and crowdsourced online result collation and viewing platform (ReV) designed to promote transparency in the upcoming gubernatorial elections in Nigeria, ahead of the gubernatorial elections.
Collate aims to have a robust, documented, and centralized data of all polling unit results in all states in real time in response to the controversy that surrounded the outcome of Nigeria's most recent presidential election. To accomplish this, at least one voter from each of the 176,846 polling locations in the federation must pre-register on the platform before Saturday and upload election results in real time at their polling location. This will be used as a point of reference for supporting documentation opposing result tampering.
Oo Nwoye comments on the launch, saying: "While party agents challenged election results during INEC result announcements, nobody really had in-person proof to offer. The results' total agglomeration was not apparent anywhere. So, making the case became challenging.
Though many have introduced structured solutions, such as forms, to crowdsource results, he continues: "These solutions are not entirely designed to capture all the polling units and offer real-time results as they depend on voters sporadically learning about those forms on election day, which may be too late. I therefore reasoned that it would be wise to be aware of polling locations without coverage in advance and make plans for coverage based on my product knowledge. We can identify the polling unit (PUs) that run the risk of not having results posted on Collate if voters pre-register and indicate their PUs, and we can push for voters from those PUs to register on the site before the gubernatorial election. This product's ability to plan ahead is crucial.’’
The platform has been diligently developed by Nwoye, Omosigho, and the team with the expectation that it will be a crucial game-changer for the upcoming elections. They are committed to upholding a nonpartisan stance and give the eradication of electoral fraud and corruption top priority.
The way we operate is different in that we give voters the ability to independently gather information and possess proof, according to Omosigho. "Any fraud in the voting process can be stopped when you can provide evidence. Now, independent of INEC, any candidate from any political party will have access to unmistakable proof of photos taken at the polling places.
Collate guarantees that voters who submit results to their platform will be protected and that no personally identifiable information will be made available to the public in order to preserve the integrity of the election.