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The National Assembly at the close of last year concluded public hearing and consultation with all the stakeholders in Nigeria on the best way to amend the Electoral Act, 2022 to consolidate our democracy and ensure free, fair, and credible elections. This will confer legitimacy on the winners of election and give the opponents the fortitude to bear their defeat. Democracy is built on this premise, and any democracy that cannot guarantee free and fair elections is empty and fake. In the words of Mike Igini, “the credibility of elections determines the strength of democracy.”
The burning issue in the amendment of the Electoral Act, 2022 is Section 60, which the Supreme Court, in the minds of some legal luminaries, including some who have worked with the Independent National Electoral Commission for 10 years, like Mike Igini, former Resident Electoral Commissioner of Akwa Ibom State, unfortunately and erroneously held that the provision did not make it mandatory on INEC to electronically transmit polling unit results to the IReV Portal or the collation system.
Nigerians determined over the years that it is during collation of results that manipulation of results, which rob our elections of their credibility, happens. This often stems from the mutilation and falsification of the polling unit results before they reach the collation centre after leaving the polling units. In order to cure this mischief, INEC devised the IReV Portal, which electronically preserves the sanctity of the polling unit results by storing it on the IReV Portal and transmitting it from the polling units for the whole world to see. This innovation cleaned our electoral process and made our elections credible for the first time in our electoral history. Godfatherism died. IReV Portal was created by INEC before the legislature caught up with INEC to make it a law. This signifies that INEC does not even need any law before it can do the right thing because it is constitutionally mandated to conduct elections without the interference of any person or authority.
Seeing the miracle of the IReV Portal, Nigerians insisted that it must be included in the Law to make it mandatory. This was done in the Electoral Act, 2022. (See sections 47, 50(2), 60(5), 62(2), of the Electoral Act, 2022; Paragraph 38 of the Regulations and Guidelines for the Conduct of Election, 2022). Unfortunately, the Supreme Court held that INEC had a discretion to transmit or not to transmit electronically, inspiring the Nigerian people to clamour more for its mandatory inclusion in the Act to compel transmission to the IReV Portal.
The reason for this clamour was the dubious claim by INEC under Prof Yakubu Mahmood in 2023 that they were unable to electronically transmit the polling unit results of the presidential election due to technical glitch, even when they electronically transmitted the National Assembly results held at the same time with the presidential election. The claim flew in the face of logic when Amazon Website Services that was the company in which INEC was domiciled declared that they didn’t witness any technical glitch in its website. INEC duped Nigerians and returned elected President Tinubu who lost his home state Lagos and emerged with only about 36 per cent of the votes – the smallest in Nigeria’s history.
It is in response to this clamour that the National Assembly came up with the amendment which stated that “the presiding officer shall electronically transmit the results from each polling unit to IREV portal in real time and such transmission shall be done after the prescribed Form EC8A has been signed and stamped by the Presiding Officer and/or countersigned by the candidates or polling agents where available at the polling unit.” This amendment reflected the wish of all Nigerians, and everyone applauded it, except probably, Tinubu and his, according to Senator Ndume, Kakistocrats and kleptocrats. Tinubu obviously believed that he will lose the election of 2027 if the amendment stands. He simply commanded the National Assembly, which is in his pocket, to change the clause which they have come up with, after the public hearing and consultation with all the stakeholders.
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The Senate, under Senator Godswill Akpabio, reacted swiftly to effect Tinubu’s demand by removing the amended clause completely from the proposed new Act. It resorted back to the Electoral Act 2022 which provided the impetus for the technical glitch to occur. On seeing the outrage of both the national and international communities on this obvious approval for rigging by the Senate, Akpabio and his gang came up with a deceit position which brought a new amendment clause to 60(3) which states that: “The Presiding Officer shall electronically transmit the results from each polling unit to the IREV portal, and such transmission shall be done after the prescribed Form EC8A has been signed and stamped by the Presiding Officer and/or countersigned by the candidates or Polling agents where available at the Polling Unit. PROVIDED that if the electronic transmission of the result fails as a result of communication failure and it becomes impossible to transmit the result contained in form EC8A signed and stamped by the Presiding Officer and countersigned by the candidates or polling agents where available at the polling unit, the form EC8A shall remain the primary source of collation and declaration of the result.”
The unneeded proviso practically restored the discretion to INEC to collate the results with unverified manually delivered polling unit results if INEC determines that it didn’t have network. This argument of lack of network has been debunked by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), Nigerian Society of Engineers, all the relevant stakeholders since 2022. INEC has never complained of lack of network since it started operating the IReV Portal in 2020. Even the technical glitch was not associated with network, it was a figment of the imagination of Prof Yakubu, hence the nebulous concept of inexplicable technical glitch.
The dubious proviso was fiercely and commendably opposed by the opposition lawmakers in the Senate led by Senator Enyinnaya Abaribe and opposition members in the House of Representatives. At the end of the debates, the All Progressives Congress (APC) led by President Tinubu had its way on 17th February, 2026 when APC voted to approve the offensive proviso. To prove that Tinubu ordered the amendment, Tinubu signed the Bill for an Act to Repeal the Electoral Act, No. 13, 2022 and Enact the Electoral Bill, 2026, into an Act within 24 hours on the 18th February 2026. The fastest in Nigerian history. Tinubu was the only citizen who praised the National Assembly members for the amendment.
Nigerians have been reeling from this betrayal of trust by the legislature owing to their slavery to their master, the President. Since 2019, the independence of the National Assembly has been completely compromised by being a rubber stamp to the executive. During the tenure of Senator Ahmad Lawan as Senate President under the regime of President Buhari, the National Assembly ignorantly voted itself out as statutory delegates that vote in the primary elections that produce the candidates of their parties. It was late when they realised this. Today, they have become irrelevant in the determination of the candidates of their parties. By approving the removal of indirect primaries in the determination of the candidates of political parties, some of them will still be in the fields campaigning to become candidates of their parties when the names of Tinubu’s preferred candidates will be announced from Abuja in the name of results from the direct primaries election. That’s when they will realise their folly
The whole idea of the proviso is to provide opportunities for corrupt politicians, in collusion with INEC, to rig 2027 elections. If Prof Joash Amupitan insists on free, fair and credible elections, he will give Nigerians such elections, because the Act gives INEC the discretion to do so. If he decides to rig the 2027 elections, he can corruptly hide under network problems to do so. Nigerians must not give up hope. They should be happy that APC has made its intention open that it will rig the 2027 elections. What is left for them is to prepare against the rigging machine of APC.
The first preparation is to make it clear that it is mandatory for INEC to transmit results electronically, and insist that any Presiding Officer who deliberately and dubiously hides under the unavailability of network to frustrate the electronic transmission of results would be treated like a criminal.. The power of the people will always be more powerful than the people in power. Tinubu’s attempt to turn Nigeria into Lagos will fail.
