When Nigerian President Bola Tinubu signed an amendment to the Electoral Act into law on February 18, it was supposed to be a move toward more transparent elections. But opposition parties and civic groups remain sceptical. <\/p>\n
The amended Act requires electronic transmission of results to the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) Result Viewing Portal (IReV). <\/p>\n
However, a proviso allowing a return to manual transmission if technical difficulties prevent electronic transmission has triggered protests by opposition parties.<\/p>\n
In cases where technology fails or network is unavailable, the manually completed Form EC8A serves as the primary basis for result collation and declaration. Critics say this falls short of the transparency ensured by electronic transmission.<\/p>\n
The fact that the final version does not mandate “real-time” publication of results is also controversial. Writing in The Cable on February 14, Nigerian lawyers Collins Okeke and Gukongozi Esther at Olisa Agbakoba Legal argued that the absence of “real-time” meant that presiding officers do not necessarily need to electronically transmit results immediately while witnesses are present.<\/p>\n
Opponents smell a rat<\/p>\n
Political opponents of the government say these are loopholes allowing for the possibility of electoral fraud. The African Democratic Congress (ADC) a new opposition coalition that has brought together former vice president Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi, Tinubu’s top two rivals during the 2023 vote, accused the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) of plotting to undermine the 2027 elections.<\/p>\n
“With the alarmingly speedy assent to the Electoral Act Amendment Bill, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu has signed the death warrant on credible elections and, by so doing, set Nigeria’s democracy back by several decades,” Bolaji Abdullahi, the spokesman for ADC, said in a statement.<\/p>\n
Tinubu has defended the amendments. <\/p>\n
“These amendments are not about politics,” Tinubu said at the signing.<\/p>\n
“They are about closing gaps, strengthening procedures, and providing greater clarity to those who conduct and participate in our elections.”<\/p>\n
“What Nigerians want is simple: a mandatory legal provision compelling INEC to transmit election results electronically,” said Victor Opatola, a Lagos-based lawyer. “By retaining discretionary language, the National Assembly has failed to learn from the betrayal of trust witnessed in the last election and has once again handed INEC unchecked power.”<\/p>\n
An outcry and protests had already forced revisions to earlier versions of the legislation. <\/p>\n
An earlier version passed by the House of Representatives mandated the electronic transmission of results, but the Senate approved only the manual “transfer” of the results.<\/p>\n
This prompted days of protests at the National Assembly by rights and civic groups as well as opposition parties who demanded mandatory electronic transmission.<\/p>\n
This appeared to force the lawmakers’ hands, who convened an extraordinary session on February 10 to reverse course. This time, they approved electronic transmission. The House of Representatives also reversed its earlier course and adopted the Senate position at its February 17 session. The harmonised position of the two chambers was signed into law by Tinubu the next day.<\/p>\n
An enduring challenge<\/p>\n
How to assure the integrity of the votes cast at polling units has for years been a major challenge of Nigerian elections.<\/p>\n
After his 2007 election, former President Umaru Yar’Adua acknowledged that the process that brought him to power was deeply flawed. He subsequently initiated reforms to improve the integrity of the ballot. That reform was pursued by his successor, Goodluck Jonathan, resulting in the first peaceful transfer of power to an opposition party in Nigeria’s history in 2015.<\/p>\n
Since then, the APC has demurred on other aspects of those reforms, such as electronic transmission of results, which critics say it vital to preventing the falsification of election results. In 2019, then-President Muhammadu Buhari declined to implement electronic transmission on the grounds of inadequate time.<\/p>\n
Ahead of the 2023 elections, INEC was given the discretion to choose electronic transmission. It chose to apply real-time uploading of results. But on the presidential election day, it declared an unexplained “glitch” and there was no real-time release of the results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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