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Founder of the Nigeria Election Petition Organisation and lawyer, Ameze Belo-Osagie, has called for greater focus on preventing electoral malpractice before elections rather than relying on the courts to punish violations after results have been declared.
Osagie made the call during an interview with ARISE NEWS on Sunday while discussing her research into election litigation in Nigeria.
She said the persistent failure of many election petitions should push stakeholders to strengthen the electoral process before voting takes place.
“I have come to the view that we need to be far more focused on making malpractice difficult to commit before the fact, rather than trying to punish it after,” she said.
According to Osagie, electoral litigation remains important, but the judicial process should not be the primary mechanism for dealing with malpractice that could have been prevented during the conduct of an election.
Her research examined more than 3,300 election tribunal judgments spanning more than two decades, as well as hundreds of interviews across 17 states. She said the data showed a significant increase in election petition judgments between the 2019 and 2023 election cycles, from about 543 to 943.
Osagie said the nature of electoral malpractice has also created difficulties for challengers in court. While qualification disputes can often be established through documentary evidence, she said allegations involving vote-buying and electoral violence are more difficult to prove because of the evidential burden imposed by the courts.
She argued that reforms should make it harder for cases to leave the judicial process without the allegations being properly examined.
“I would certainly say that I would be inclined to push for reforms that make it more difficult for cases to pass out of the legal process without the facts of the allegations being thoroughly investigated, looked into, concluded on, and cases decided on that kind of merit basis,” Osagie said.
She also called for greater transparency from the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, particularly in the disclosure of information about how votes are counted and results are reached.
“Everything that I think results in INEC disclosing more information rather than less to the Nigerian people, so that we can get a better sense of what happened on election day, how these results were reached, the counting etc. I think that will be a positive trend,” she said.
Osagie further questioned the structure that makes INEC a respondent in virtually every election petition.
She argued that the arrangement could create difficulties because the commission is both the body responsible for conducting elections and the institution holding important records and materials that may be required to challenge the results.
“So I think that making INEC the respondent has actually been a mistake that we’ve made in the structure of our system,” she said.
She said greater transparency and access to electoral information would help Nigerians better understand what happens during elections and make informed decisions about possible reforms.
Looking ahead to the 2027 elections, Osagie said pre-election litigation would be an important area to watch, particularly because such cases can determine which candidates appear on the ballot before voters cast their votes.
“So certainly I think the big trends to look out for in this 2027 cycle are actually a lot to do with pre-election litigation rather than post-election litigation,” she said.
Osagie maintained that preventing malpractice before elections would be more effective than depending on litigation after the fact, while stressing that courts should still provide a meaningful avenue for establishing what happened when electoral disputes arise.
