ELECTORAL TRANSPARENCY IN REVERSE GEAR

By Dakuku Peterside

A democracy rarely collapses in a single dramatic moment. More often, it is slowly redesigned—clause by clause—until citizens wake up to discover that elections still take place, but accountability no longer does.

Nigeria’s democracy is not being overthrown with tanks on the streets. It is being edited quietly through legislation, often presented as technical clarification. And sometimes, the most dangerous edits are those that preserve the loopholes responsible for eroding public trust.

On Wednesday, February 4, 2026, the Nigerian Senate passed the Electoral Act Amendment Bill after concluding deliberations on proposed changes to the Electoral Act 2022. The most consequential decision, however, was not what the Senate approved, but what it declined: a proposal that would have made electronic transmission of polling-unit results to the public results portal compulsory in real time.

Senate leaders insisted that INEC may still deploy technology and that the existing framework was merely being retained. That defence is precisely the problem.

The Senate did not prohibit electronic transmission; it refused to guarantee it. In Nigeria’s electoral history, that distinction marks the difference between deterrence and discretion. When transparency is optional, manipulation becomes strategic. When evidence is discretionary, truth becomes negotiable.

Under the current framework, the manner of transmitting results is left to what INEC prescribes. INEC itself has acknowledged that result collation remains “basically still manual,” despite provisions allowing electronic transmission. This is how loopholes survive: technology exists on paper, but the law permits it to be applied inconsistently, delayed, or sidelined at critical moments.

This debate is not about fetishising gadgets. It is about protecting the only stage of the electoral process that citizens can truly observe. At polling units, voters, party agents, observers, and cameras witness the count. Once results move into the collation chain—often late at night, under pressure, and with limited visibility—the opportunities for manipulation expand: delays, substitutions, intimidation, disappearance of forms, or the deliberate creation of inconsistencies that later fuel litigation.

A mandatory, time-bound polling-unit upload does not create integrity by magic, but it shortens the distance between the voter’s will and a publicly verifiable record of that will. Refusing to lock this safeguard into law is not neutrality. It is a deliberate decision to preserve deniability.

This is why many Nigerians interpret the Senate’s action as laying the groundwork for electoral manipulation ahead of 2027. Not necessarily because outcomes have been scripted, but because the architecture of plausible deniability is being preserved in advance. If electronic transmission remains optional, future controversies will arrive with ready-made excuses: network failures, discretionary guidelines, lawful manual collation, or claims that no clause was violated.

The experience of the 2023 general elections still lingers. The Supreme Court held that electronic transmission was not mandatory under the 2022 law and that the IReV portal served primarily as a viewing platform. Instead of legislating away this ambiguity, the Senate has chosen to preserve it.

There is also a troubling irony in the reforms the Senate retained. BVAS remains mandatory for accreditation. The PVC remains the sole valid means of voter identification. Penalties for certain offences have reportedly been increased. In effect, lawmakers are comfortable using technology to police citizens at the entry point of the process, while refusing to impose equally strict transparency at the exit point—where power is actually decided.

Defenders of the Senate’s position have attempted to narrow the debate to semantics and logistics, arguing over “real-time” transmission and network limitations. But a legislature serious about credibility would legislate redundancy: time stamps, store-and-forward uploads, clear exception thresholds, audit trails, and sanctions for sabotage. Nigeria is not too technologically poor to mandate transparency; it is politically reluctant to do so.

The Senate also approved changes to the electoral calendar, shortening INEC’s notice period for elections from 360 days to 180 days and compressing submission timelines for political parties. While such changes may appear efficient, in Nigeria’s political reality, they often advantage entrenched structures while shrinking the space for credible primaries and alternative candidacies.

None of this is irreversible. The bill must still be harmonised with the House of Representatives’ version before it is sent to the President for assent. Until then, the Electoral Act 2022 remains in force. That window matters.

The democratic bottom line is simple. If electronic transmission remains optional, citizens should understand it as a deliberate refusal to close the door against manipulation. If mandatory, verifiable polling-unit uploads are restored with robust safeguards, lawmakers will have shown that credible elections are not a favour to opposition parties, but a foundation for national stability.

Democracy is not only the right to vote. It is the right to have that vote count in a verifiable way. When the law refuses to guarantee verification, it invites apathy, fuels cynicism, and makes political competition more combustible—because when ballots fail to settle disputes, other forces will try.

Nigeria can not afford another election whose legitimacy is negotiated after the fact. If 2027 is to mark a democratic turning point, the law must stop flirting with opacity and start insisting—without ambiguity—that the people’s verdict is a public truth to be transmitted, seen, and owned.

Dr Dakuku Peterside is the author of “Leading in a Storm” and “Beneath the Surface.”