The Nigerian political opposition woke up from what one can call a deep slumber last week when they organized a world press conference to address key provisions of the 2026 Electoral Act, which was signed into law by President Bola Tinubu on February 18, 2026. In a speech read by the National Chairman of the New Nigeria People’s Party (NNPP), Ajuji Ahmed, which was titled, ‘Urgent Call to Save Nigeria’s Democracy’, the opposition political parties including the NNPP and the African Democratic Congress (ADC) rejected the Electoral Act 2026 passed into law by the National Assembly a day before the presidential assent. They specifically faulted Section 60(3) of the Act, which provides a proviso for the mandatory electronic transmission of election results from the polling units. The act allows the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to rely on Form EC8A as backup where electronic transmission to INEC’s election viewing portal, IReV, fails.
According to the opposition leaders, Nigerians should reject the new law because it was capable of setting the nation’s democracy backwards. The opposition leaders in attendance at the press conference included former vice president Atiku Abubakar, a chieftain of the ADC, presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) in the 2023 election, Mr. Peter Obi, who is also of the ADC, National Chairman of the ADC, Senator David Mark, National Secretary of the party, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, former Minister of Transportation, Rotimi Amaechi; National Publicity Secretary of the ADC, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi and the former National Chairman of the ADC, Chief Ralph Nwosu and a former governor of Cross River State, Liyel Imoke, among others.
The opposition figures claimed that the passage of Section 60(3) of the new Electoral Act was “part of the ongoing design by the Tinubu-led APC to disorganise and weaken opposition, corrupt the electoral system, compromise democratic institutions and foist a totalitarian one-party rule on Nigeria. “
The opposition leaders went down memory lane to provide historical details on the capability of the electoral commission to deliver on e-transmission of votes from the polling units. Let me quote them extensively as follows: “The introduction of the proviso in Section 60(3), which allows wide and undefined discretionary powers to the presiding officer, overrides and negates the purpose of introducing electronic transmission of election results from polling units.
“This negation is unambiguously intended to provide a blank check to those who seek to manipulate election results by delaying the electronic transmission of results from the polling units to the IREV on the pretext of network failure.
“The premise of the provision in Section 60(3) is the unavailability or possibility of network failure. We find this premise dubious and inconsistent with reality.
“The immediate past INEC Chairman, Prof. Mahmud Yakubu, stated on record that the BVAS equipment, which operates offline, had worked with over 90% success rate across the nation, and in the event of network failure at the point of transmission, the transmitted results would be delivered successfully whenever the network is available.
“This position has been further confirmed most recently by the former INEC Commissioner, Festus Okoye, as widely reported, that every polling unit in Nigeria has internet access. Indeed, these statements by those who have been in a position to know provide counterfactual evidence to the lies that are being fed to the Nigerian people by a government that has lost respect for reason and reality.
“The testimonies of these two principal officers of INEC have also been strongly supported by publicly available data. According to the Nigerian Communications Commission, as of 2023, Nigeria had achieved more than 95% 2G coverage, which is more than sufficient for the transmission of election results from polling units. And by that same period, Nigeria already had more than 159 million internet subscribers, and more than 220 million telephone subscribers using a 2G network.
“It is also noteworthy that this capacity for 24-hour coverage of the entire country goes to show that denying mandatory real-time transmission of election results from the polling units based on a lack of communication network is not supported by evidence.
“Fortunately, millions of our people who transact business daily with various financial platforms, even from the remotest parts of the country, know that the no-network argument is fraudulent and is merely part of the APC game plan to rig the election in 2027.
“Indeed, we find it quite ironic that the same APC that strongly agitated for electronic voting only a few years ago is now opposed to the use of technology for mere transmission of results. The game at hand is very clear.”
While I sympathise with the opposition and indeed believe that the claims raised above are relevant enough to compel a judicial review, I would state here that they appeared to have slept on their rights, having failed to apply the vigilance of the eagle while the amendment process was ongoing.
In January, I met an opposition leader, and when he raised the issue about the electoral act amendment bill, which was still in the works at the time, I told him the opposition was sleeping and that by the time they would wake up, it would be too late in the day. I insisted that, as the Yoruba would say, the ruling party would have gberu opposition lati eyin (euphemism for adding more to an overloaded donkey). I was shocked that the opposition parties did not come up with a copy of their own proposed electoral act amendment bill, which they could push through their members in the National Assembly, the media, and the civil society. I was also surprised that the opposition was not following the process in the National Assembly bumper to bumper. The political figure told me that the media should also be vigilant on the matter but I insisted that the media cannot return to the activist or adversarial role it played during the military because a democratic government is ab initio seen as legitimate, and that the ‘war’ waged against the military by the media was because it was illegitimate to seize power by the barrels of the gun. I made him realise that the media cannot operate in a stateless situation and that the media basically operates as a marketplace of ideas. Everybody who has a view can be accommodated by the media to ventilate. When you keep quiet, the media may not be able to fight your battle for you.
But at that point, it was quite late in the day. The House of Representatives had listened to suggestions from civil society and development partners that the nation deserves real-time e-transmission of results. It included that clause in its document passed in December 2025. The Senate vacillated and dragged as the chamber resumed plenary late in January. When it finally came in and out of its several closed/executive sessions, it launched a blow against the push for e-transmission of results from the polling units, by inserting a proviso that killed that objective. The House of Representatives concurred with the Senate at the last minute.
As much as the opposition is entitled to rail against the potential booby trap that they saw in the Electoral Act, the truth must be said that citizen vigilance in the lawmaking process is lacking here, and that the idea of leaving those in the National Assembly to pass laws anyhow they liked will always be counterproductive. Politicians are people with multifaceted agendas at every point in time. They are always in search of avenues to confer advantages on themselves. And whoever you give a hoe will always draw it towards himself, even if it’s a madman. So, eternal vigilance must have been the watchword of the opposition.
What stopped them from producing a draft electoral act amendment bill signed into by the major opposition parties? What stopped them from raising desk officers to stand toe-to-toe with the lawmakers as they went through the amendment process? Why did it escape the opposition that Nigeria had an existing Electoral Act 2022 and that we don’t need the 10th Assembly to break down the existing document by starting afresh? Why did the opposition not compel the Assembly to just concentrate on curing the lapses seen in the 2022 Act, rather than going on rounds of public hearings and wasting two years on needless debates?
IReV can indeed work perfectly in at least 93 per cent of the country. In fact, with the level of the nation’s teledensity, electronic transmission to IReV should be guaranteed in all of the over 176,000 polling units. But no one needs 100 per cent transmitted results to determine the winner, anyway. I was made to understand that, as far back as the 2019 election, INEC was going to experiment with electronic transmission, but that the administration of the late President Muhammadu Buhari arrested that wish when they forced a postponement. So, transmission of election results should not be an impossible task in 2027, but the failure of the opposition to maintain their gaze on the ball let down the push for e-transmission, thereby allowing the ruling party to insert a needless proviso. Instead of that proviso, the Act should just have mandated INEC to transmit results onto IReV from each polling unit across the country, in real time or not. That would have removed election results from the claws of tricky politicians.
However, all is not lost for those in search of electoral integrity. Vigilance at the polling units, vigilance about the entire candidate recruitment process, and electoral education for citizens remain the key. Popular candidates and popular parties can operate their own IReV through functional situation rooms, which would collate results from the EC8A turned in by party agents from the polling units. That way, whether real-time or whether the proviso is applied, authentic winners chosen by the people would emerge.
(Published by the Sunday Tribune, March 1, 2026).
