Abuja — As Nigeria’s 2019 election approaches, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) and the African Regional Institute for Geospatial Information Technology during their International Workshop on Digital Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing For Improved Governance (AFRIGIST) has concluded arrangements to deploy scientific technology tool called, “Handset Situation Room,” to ensure a free, fair, credible polls at all levels..
The tool, used by advanced countries, will enable its observers to use handsets that would monitor elections at specific polls, provide information to a situation room with screen technologies to view live reports of the entire exercise on ground.
The Director, Early Warning Department of the ECOWAS, Dr. Gueye Abdu Lat disclosed this yesterday in his message to the International Training on digital Photogrammetry for Improved Governance held in Abuja.
Lat said that the new method, which is contrary to the old one where ECOWAS election monitoring observers go out to poll centres and report manually is obsolete because of some challenges associated with the practice.
According to him, the scientific technology would also be used to monitor the forthcoming elections in Mali and Senegal to ensure credible and acceptable polls.
The Executive Director of AFRIGIST, Dr. Adewale Akingbade, said it has successfully trained over 2,000 Africans on photogrammetry and has acquired a drone for further training and mapping as it migrates to digital operations.
He explained that photogrammetry refers to collating and analysing information from photo images. ‘It is a three-dimentional (3D) coordinate measuring technique that uses photographs as the fundamental medium for measurement.
By Anthony Otaru
http://allafrica.com/stories/201805160123.html
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