Our elections in a shadow of doubt

2026-02-23 - 04:56

Hopes that the Electoral Act Amendment would be given an undiluted and cast-iron provision for real-time electronic transfer of results from the polling station to the headquarters of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, were dashed last week Tuesday, at the rescheduled sitting of the House of Representatives. The House, which had earlier passed the Bill approving real-time result transmission, reversed itself by adopting Section 60(3) at the sitting obviously rescheduled for that purpose. By so doing, the House, which had earlier been praised for respecting the expressed will of Nigerians, caved in to pressures to align with the Senate’s decision that INEC should adopt manual collation of results from duly-signed Form EC8A if real-time transmission “fails”. In both chambers of the National Assembly, it was obvious that the vast majority of the members initially sided with the people but eventually bowed to the contentious mongrel version favoured mainly by the leadership of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC-dominated Federal Legislature. Critics strongly believe that allowing manual collation will provide the loophole for compromising the outcomes of elections, especially the 2027 general elections. President Bola Tinubu unsurprisingly gave his express assent to the Bill within 24 hours of its passage, thus burying any outside hope for a last-minute miracle. What we just witnessed is a major negative offshoot of the gales of defections to the ruling APC. The opposition has shrunk so much that the remaining minority party members in both chambers have become glorified activists whose walkouts count for nothing. It is a stark contrast with what happened during Senator Bukola Saraki’s tenure as Senate President and Yakubu Dogara as Speaker of the House of Representatives. Majority of the federal lawmakers fought gallantly to ensure the approval of INEC’s electronic innovations and real-time electronic transmission of results. The Electoral Amendment exercise, which had started in 2018, was eventually signed into law by former President Muhammadu Buhari, on February 25, 2022, after rejecting it a record five times with flimsy excuses! Unlike the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, regimes under the late President Umaru Yar’Adua and former President Goodluck Jonathan, which worked toward genuine electoral reforms, the APC regimes have shown extreme reluctance to free our elections from manipulations. With the current situation of things, the people’s power to choose has been hijacked by the very lawmakers they elected to represent them. They now have little or no power to decide who leads them. They have also lost the power to ensure that their votes will count. The situation leaves voters with very little incentive to bother to vote in future elections. Nigerians should not be discouraged. They should never relent in efforts to recover their democratic power. Massive voter registration and voting can still enforce the popular will. Boycotts will only play into the hands of the anti-democratic forces.