By Dakuku Peterside
Democracies rarely die in one dramatic moment. More often, they are quietly redesigned—clause by clause—until citizens discover that elections still occur, but accountability no longer follows. Nigeria’s democracy is not being overthrown; it is being edited. Not with tanks on the streets, but with provisions in a bill. The most dangerous edits are the ones sold as “technical clarifications,” because they preserve the loopholes that repeatedly fracture trust.“ In Nigeria, credibility is the currency of consent.
On Wednesday, 4 February 2026, after deliberations on proposed changes to the Electoral Act 2022, the Senate passed the Electoral Act Amendment Bill. Yet its most consequential act was a refusal: it declined to make electronic transmission of polling-unit results to the public results portal compulsory in real time. Senate leaders insist INEC can still deploy technology and that the framework was merely “retained.”
That defence is the indictment. The Senate did not ban electronic transmission; it refused to guarantee it. When transparency is optional, manipulation becomes strategic. When evidence is discretionary, truth becomes negotiable. A law that says “INEC may” is not a safeguard; it is an escape hatch, wide enough for pressure, convenience, and partisan calculation to slip through at the decisive hour.
This is not about worshipping gadgets. It is about protecting the only segment of the results chain that citizens can truly observe. At the polling unit, party agents, observers, and voters can witness the count and the completion of result forms. Once the process migrates into the collation chain—often late, tense, and opaque—the opportunities for interference expand: delay, substitution, intimidation, “corrections,” missing forms, and manufactured inconsistencies that later become the raw material of litigation.
Refusing to lock polling-unit upload into law is therefore not neutral. It preserves plausible deniability. If electronic transmission is merely permitted, the next high-stakes contest will come with ready-made alibis: “network issues,” “INEC did not prescribe it,” “manual collation remains lawful,” “the portal is only for viewing,” “no clause was violated.” The election becomes a courtroom drama after the fact, rather than a process whose key evidence is available in real time.
Nigeria’s recent legal memory sharpens the concern. Many citizens recall that the Supreme Court held electronic transmission was not mandatory under the 2022 law and that the results portal is primarily a viewing platform, not the legal site of collation. A reform-minded legislature would respond by legislating clarity—turning transparency from an institutional courtesy into a citizen’s right. Preserving ambiguity is, at best, political timidity; at worst, political intent.
The irony is that lawmakers were comfortable retaining strictness where it constrains voters, not where it constrains politicians. They kept BVAS for accreditation, maintained the PVC as the only valid voter identification at polling units, and reportedly increased penalties for some offences. The message is hard to miss: discipline the citizen at the entry point, but leave discretion at the exit point—where power is awarded and where the incentives to manipulate are strongest.
Defenders of the Senate’s position invoke logistics: uneven connectivity and the burden of “real time.” But a serious legislature confronted with weak networks would design redundancy into a mandate rather than retreat into discretion: store-and-forward syncing with time stamps; clear exception thresholds; multiple transmission pathways; audit trails; and penalties that deter sabotage and non-compliance. Nigeria is not too technologically poor to legislate transparency; it is too politically conflicted to do so without pressure.
Reports also indicate the bill tightens the electoral calendar, reducing INEC’s notice-of-election window from 360 days to 180 days and compressing party submission timelines. Efficiency is attractive on paper, but compressed timelines often privilege entrenched machines—those who already control party structures, money, and logistics—while shrinking space for credible primaries, internal democracy, and alternative candidacies. When you weaken transparency and compress preparation time, you raise the premium on incumbency.
None of this is irreversible yet. The bill is not law. The Senate’s version must be harmonised with the House of Representatives’ version through a Conference Committee before it goes to the President for assent; until then, the Electoral Act 2022 remains operative. That window matters. It is where Nigerians must insist—without euphemism—that transparency cannot be a favour granted by institutions; it must be a right guaranteed to citizens.
The democratic bottom line is straightforward: make polling-unit result upload mandatory, time-bound, and publicly verifiable; define exceptions tightly; build redundancy for low-connectivity areas; and enforce consequences for sabotage. Anything less is an invitation to “manage” outcomes. Nigeria cannot afford another election whose legitimacy is negotiated after the fact. If 2027 is to be a democratic turning point, the law must stop flirting with opacity and insist, without ambiguity, that the people’s verdict is a public truth.
Dakuku Peterside is the author of two best-selling books, Leading in a Storm and Beneath the Surface
