Students and hub members across Nigeria will have the opportunity to win cash and other prizes totaling over three hundred thousand Naira at the #StartupSouth4 #Hackvotes Hackathon in Owerri this October.
#StartupSouth4 #HackVotes hackathon with Support from The Ford Foundation is looking for tech solutions by Students to solve Nigeria’s Voters’ Apathy issues. Teams will be required to demonstrate effectiveness of their solution and show a clear-cut plan for mass adoption.
Experts believe part of Nigeria’s perennial economic under performance is due to ineffective or poor quality Leadership. The process of leadership selection through the ballot box suffer from a huge voters apathy leading to low turnout on election days.
The winning candidate in the 2015 election scored approximately 15Million votes against his opponent’s 13Million but the total votes cast was less than 50% of the total registered voters.
Poor Voters turnout in some ways create room for irregularities and manipulations of election data by officials and political party agents - thereby subverting the true will of the people.
According to experts, some causes of Voter Apathy include but not limited to:
- Lack of Faith in the electoral system
- Fear of violence at the polling units
- Inadequate or insufficient voter registration arrangements and lack of cards.
- Voters Inability to retrieve duly registered or missing voters card.