By Kunle Oshobi
The passage of the Senate bill permitting the electronic transmission of election results should have been a moment of celebration for Nigerian democracy. Instead, it serves as a sobering reminder of how far we still have to go, and how much further we could fall back if citizens let down their guard.
The memories of the 2023 presidential election remain fresh and painful. While results from National Assembly elections flowed smoothly through electronic channels, the presidential election results encountered what officials described as technical difficulties at polling units nationwide. The pattern was too consistent, too convenient, and too targeted to be coincidental. When identical “glitches” affect only one category of results across an entire nation, while simultaneously conducted elections face no such obstacles, the conclusion becomes inescapable: this was sabotage by design, not accident or by chance.
Now, as Nigeria prepares for future elections under new legislation, the provision allowing manual collation as a fallback option reads less like a safety measure and more like a trapdoor, an escape hatch built into the system for those who would prefer the opacity of paper to the transparency of technology.
The Glitch That Wasn’t
Consider the peculiar nature of the 2023 failures. INEC officers cited missing upload codes, malfunctioning equipment, and connectivity issues. Yet these same officers, using the same devices, successfully transmitted Senatorial and House of Representatives results. The equipment worked. The network functioned. The codes existed. What changed between one upload and the next was not the technology but the stakes.
This selective failure reveals something crucial about how electoral manipulation works in the digital age. It’s not that the technology is inherently unreliable; it’s that human operators can make it unreliable when doing so serves their interests. The 2023 experience taught us that INEC’s institutional will, not its technological capacity, is the weak link in Nigeria’s electoral chain.
The Danger of the Fallback Clause
The new legislation’s provision for manual collation “in case of technical difficulties” sounds reasonable on paper. In practice, it hands potential riggers a ready-made excuse. After all, who determines when technical difficulties are genuine? Who verifies that electronic transmission was truly impossible rather than merely inconvenient for those seeking a predetermined outcome?
Manual collation is slower, more opaque, and far more vulnerable to manipulation at multiple points in the chain of custody. Results can be altered during transportation, changed during transcription, or simply replaced with fabricated documents. The very delays that manual processes introduce create windows of opportunity for interference that electronic systems are designed to close.
If INEC could orchestrate a nationwide failure of presidential result transmission in 2023, what’s to prevent a repeat performance in future elections, this time with the legal cover of “resorting to the fallback option as provided by law”?
What Vigilance Must Look Like
For Nigerian citizens, the task ahead is clear but demanding. Vigilance cannot be passive. It cannot be limited to election day. It must be constant, organized, and backed by concrete action.
Before the elections: Civil society organizations, political parties, and citizen observers must demand transparency about the electronic transmission systems. What safeguards prevent selective failure? Who monitors the monitors? What independent verification exists to confirm that electronic transmission was genuinely attempted before manual methods are employed? These questions must be asked loudly and repeatedly.
During the elections: Polling agents from all parties and independent observers must document everything. When INEC officials claim technical difficulties, those claims must be recorded, with photographs, videos, witness statements, and technical details. The specific nature of any alleged malfunction must be documented in real time, not reconstructed later from memory.
After voting closes: Citizens must not disperse when voting ends. The real vulnerability begins during result collation. Any unexplained delays, any resort to manual processes, any deviation from electronic protocols must be challenged immediately, not after results have been announced.
Technology Is Only As Honest As Its Operators
The bitter truth is that electronic transmission is not a silver bullet. It’s a tool, and like any tool, its effectiveness depends on the integrity of those wielding it. INEC has demonstrated that it possesses both the capacity and the willingness to undermine electronic systems when it serves institutional or political interests.
This doesn’t mean we should abandon technology. Rather, it means we must recognize that technological solutions require vigilant human oversight. The electronic transmission system is only as secure as citizens make it through constant monitoring and immediate challenges to any irregularities.
The Path Forward
Nigeria stands at a critical juncture. The infrastructure for credible elections exists. The legal framework is being updated. What remains uncertain is whether the political will exists within INEC to conduct elections honestly, and whether Nigerian citizens will maintain the pressure necessary to ensure that this will is exercised.
The 2023 election should have ended any remaining benefit of the doubt. When an institution demonstrates that it cannot be trusted with the most basic responsibility of electoral management, by accurately transmitting results that voters have already cast, it forfeits the right to operate without intense scrutiny.
As we move toward future elections, Nigerians must internalize a difficult lesson: no law, no technology, and no institutional reform will protect democratic rights that citizens themselves are unwilling to defend. The fallback provision for manual collation will be exploited unless citizens make the cost of that exploitation higher than its benefits. This requires organization, documentation, and the collective determination to reject any election marred by the same suspicious patterns that characterized 2023.
Democracy in Nigeria will not be delivered by INEC. It must be seized and protected by Nigerians themselves, one vigilantly observed polling unit at a time. The question is not whether the next election will present opportunities for manipulation; the legislation’s fallback clause ensures that it will. The question is whether Nigerians will be watching closely enough to prevent those opportunities from being exploited.
The 2023 experience taught us what’s possible when vigilance lapses. Let it also teach us what’s necessary to prevent it from happening again.
Kunle Oshobi is the Head of Strategy and Planning of the Narrative Force.
