Centre for Civic Citizens’ Welfare and Community Development (CWCD Africa), the foundation arm of The CANs Innovation Hub, has inaugurated an Election Monitoring Platform -Zabe 2.0, ahead of 2023 elections.
Mr Khalil Halilu, the founder and Chief Executive Officer of the foundation said this at a news conference on the Zabe 2.0 launch on Thursday in Abuja.
Halilu said that the inauguration was made possible by the Civic Tech Fund Project in partnership with the Goree Institute, charter Project Africa and European Union.
“The app, known as “Zabe’’ which means to vote in Hausa, was developed to contribute toward a better election management in Nigeria,” he said.
He said that the idea of Zabe came from trends on social media during elections where citizens follow up election processes and results on the Internet.
He said that the election monitoring platform would create an effective system that guarantee trust in the electoral system.
“We created Zabe 2.0 as an upgrade to the Zabe 1.0 app in 2018. Zabe 2.0 is a cutting-edge data collection and processing system designed ahead of Nigeria’s 2023 general elections.
“Zabe is an election monitoring app that leverages on the power of crowd source data to bring transparency in election by doing voter tabulation in terms of result as well as incidence reporting.
” So that we make our election very transparent for public consumption and ensure that democracy is on the table for everyone to see.
“The key difference between zabe 1.0 which we ran four years ago and Zabe 2.0 is the fact that this has a resource centre where we are going to have a lot of information on voter education and survey and to counter fake news,” he said.
Also speaking, Mr Anthony Eromosele, an official of the foundation, said that Zabe 2.0 was built to allow the average citizen to report from his community what was happening before, during and after election.
“Furthermore, with Zabe 2.0, system admins have full control of dashboard management, including analytics and user permissions.
” We are very intentional about this programme, bringing to bear experiences, lessons, and key insights from Zabe 1.0.
“Zabe 2.0 promises to raise the bar of election transparency in Africa.
“The system rides on the most up-to-date data collection, processing, and sharing technologies,” he said.
Eromosele said that new features of Zabe 2.0 included a secured and encrypted chat platform, news bulletin, survey, contact center and voter education centre.
Ms Jennifer Ejeh, Chief Operation Officer CWCD ,said that the foundation would sensitise citizens on the use of the application, especially those atvthe grassroots through community engagement and town hall meetings.
Ejeh urged Nigerians to leverage on Zabe 2.0 for effective monitoring of the 2023 general elections.
Reports have it that CWCD Africa has developed and deployed other digital intervention solutions over the years to monitor elections in Nigeria.
This included RISE, which connect people who needed relief with those who provide relief; UNSUB, a digital platform that connect victims of sexual and gender-based violence to other stakeholders and BACKUP, a police accountability platform among others.
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