INEC as Last Hope on E-Transmission of Results

The refusal of the National Assembly to make electronic transmission of election results compulsory, and the hasty endorsement of the controversial legislation by President Bola Tinubu, have made the Professor Joash Amupitan-led Independent National Electoral Commission the last hope of Nigerians, Ejiofor Alike reports

Can  the officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) resist the pressure from election riggers who will hide under the cover of network failure to rig the 2027 elections, by insisting on electronic transmission of the election results of 2027 general election?

This is the question agitating the minds of Nigerians as the National Assembly refused to make electronic transmission of election results compulsory, citing possible network failure.

Despite sustained public protests, the National Assembly last week refused to remove the proviso in the Electoral Act (Repeal and Re-Enactment) Bill 2026, permitting presiding officers to rely on manually completed Form EC8A for collation where internet connectivity fails to allow immediate upload to INEC’s Result Viewing Portal (IReV).

Without inviting the telecommunication companies and the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) to make their expert opinion known publicly to Nigerians, the federal lawmakers concluded that network failure could occur in remote areas and refused to make electronic results transmission mandatory.

They practically ignored the fears by opposition parties, civil society organisations (CSOs) and local and international election monitoring groups that manual collation could weaken the integrity of the 2027 general election, and insisted that their unpopular decision was rather a practical safeguard against technical failures in remote areas.

While the Senate rejected the compulsory transmission of election results right from the beginning of the amendment process, the House of Representatives had endorsed the mandatory transmission of results electronically when they concluded the amendment process.

The green chamber had voted for real-time and mandatory electronic transmission of election results during the electoral amendment.

Many had thought that public pressure would force the joint committee of both chambers to align with the position of the House on the mandatory transmission of results electronically.

But the House, at the emergency plenary, made a U-turn with most APC lawmakers voting against making electronic transmission compulsory, while the opposition lawmakers voted in favour of it.

At the peak of the rowdy session, some members started chanting “APC ole”, meaning “APC is a thief”.

Despite the groundswell of opposition, President Bola Tinubu swiftly signed into law the controversial bill.

Before Tinubu assented to the bill, a former Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC) of INEC, Mike Igini, had called on him to withhold assent, describing the bill as “a recipe for chaos” that could undermine Nigeria’s democracy.

Igini made the call last Wednesday during an interview on ARISE NEWS Channel after the Senate’s passage of the bill.

“It is indeed my humble recommendation to Mr. President that you are a man of history. You were a senior man to many of us in the struggle at the time when the journey of Nigeria and the prospect of democracy was less certain,” he said.

“You should be a man of history; what is put before you take it back; don’t sign it,” Igini added.

Reacting to the claims made by the Senate on network failure, the Chairman of the Association of Licensed Telecom Operators in Nigeria (ALTON), the umbrella body of the telecommunication companies (telcos), Mr. Gbenga Adebayo, was quoted in media report as saying that any information about the telecom infrastructure and country coverage not emanating from the NCC could not be relied upon.

“Upon which survey or statistics is the Senate coming up with its position of inadequate telecom infrastructure?” he queried.

“As we speak today, over 70per cent of the country is covered with 3G and 4G, and 5G has about 11 per cent coverage and the rest is 2G.

“Even in reality, 2G is strong enough to transmit results electronically. I do not know where the Senate is getting its information but we can’t take that blanket ban on electronic transmission based on a half-truth about our infrastructure and investments.

“We agree that there are just maybe about two states that, due to insurgency, that our members cannot risk going to maintain facilities. But that is what all stakeholders can sit together and decide how to cover those places. It’s not enough to say the country is not ready for electronic transmission,” he explained.

The immediate past Chairman of INEC, Prof. Mahmood Yakubu had in 2022 dismissed the fears of network failures, saying that where there were network challenges, results uploaded to iREV would transmit electronically once the machines were within areas with network coverage.

Reacting to the hasty signing of the bill by Tinubu, the African Democratic Congress (ADC) last Thursday vowed to mobilise Nigerians nationwide to protect the integrity of future elections, accusing the president of weakening democratic credibility by signing the amended Electoral Act into law.

The opposition party, in a statement by its National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, questioned what it described as the undue haste with which the president approved the bill despite widespread public objections.

“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,” Abdullahi explained.

On its part, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) described the amendment of the electoral act as a huge betrayal of Nigerians.

In a statement by National Publicity Secretary of PDP, Ini Ememobong, the party said the anti-democratic stance of the Senate and the sudden somersault by House of Representatives on the amendment of the Electoral Act 2022, specifically on the mandatory electronic transmission of election results from the polling units, was an act of treachery against the Nigerian electorate.

Without compulsory transmission of election results electronically, INEC officials and the commission’s adhoc staff can adopt manual collation in areas experiencing network failures.

With this provision in the Act, these electoral officers have become the last hope of the Nigerian voters on the issue of electronic transmission of results of elections.

Many Nigerians believe that election riggers will put pressure on these officers to claim that the network has failed in some areas to enable them to manipulate election results.

Can INEC officials resist this pressure and write their names as men of history by insisting on compulsory transmission of the results?

As the 2027 elections are approaching, the hopes of the Nigerian voters will rest on Professor Joash Amupitan-led electoral body.