Recently the Senate rejected plans that the election results for the upcoming 2027 elections be transmitted in real-time. Before the 2023 election, it seemed the Senate of Nigeria had approved that mode of electronic vote transmission, and many Nigerians like me were very happy that rigging would be reduced substantially, at least if it could not be eliminated. But as the election took place, our hopes were dashed when we began to hear the complaints from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) that the election umpire had experienced glitches, a word that many Nigerians were not familiar with before that time. But the dictionary was useful. INEC reported that its machines had been massively hacked, and so results would be filed both manually and by electronic transmission.
Peter Obi, presidential candidate of the Labour Party, believes till today that if the election had been electronically transmitted, he would have won the election. I did not share that feeling either then or now. In Ibadan about two weeks ago, where he was invited to launch a book written by a public intellectual, Professor Akinyemi Onigbinde, a retired professor of philosophy, Peter was still cracking jokes about how he was rigged out. As he was going round the hall cracking jokes, he saw Jimi Agbaje, who contested the Lagos State governorship election against former Lagos State governor Raji Fashola in his second term bid. He joked that he was going to appoint Jimi Agbaje as Special Adviser on rigging because he had been rigged out and so should know how to plug rigging methods. Rigging is a Nigerian thing, and it is going to take serious innovation and dealings to solve it. In my family, we decided to handle the choice of our family Mogaji (Head) through an election. We jettisoned the traditional system used by our fathers since we are all very educated. Surprisingly, one of the contestants had planned to smuggle in extended family members so that they would vote for him, and he carried it out. He had also offered money to buy some people’s votes. This is an ordinary family election to choose the family Mogaji. We have a long way to go in Nigeria.
This disapproval by the Senate led to public outrage. All the notable names in activism in Nigeria came out to protest the Senate position. Omoyele Sowore, now the most vocal civil rights activist in Nigeria, was in the trenches immediately, shouting with his other colleagues that Senate President Godswill Akpabio must give Nigeria real-time electronic transmission of election results. Rotimi Amaechi, a former governor of oil-rich Rivers State and a former minister of transport under the Muhammadu Buhari administration who used Nigerian money to build a railway to Maradi in the Niger Republic, which Nigerians denounced as a monumental waste of the country’s resources to satisfy his boss, Buhari, who is said to have family links in the Niger Republic, added a new dimension to protests in Nigeria: he brought along his first son, who he said is a medical doctor. He had brought him; he told a Channels Television interviewer to tell Nigerians that he, as a politician, was not just drafting other people’s children outside to face government guns during protests but that his children also joined the crusade.
But Rotimi Amaechi, who wants to be president in 2027, looked so frail. Rotimi Amaechi is only 60, but he could hardly stand erect. Obi Ezekwesili, a minister under the administration of Chief Olusegun Obasanjo and a fierce public commentator, was also part of the protest. Peter Obi, the Labour Party presidential flagbearer in 2023, led another team to protest the approval of electronic transmission of election results. The protesters cried and howled outside the precints of the Senate. But on Tuesday, February 10th, 2026, the Senate convened again to respond to the public outcry. What did it do? It played it safe by approving electronic transmission of results, which at the same time allows manual filing of election results. The Senate therefore mandates that election results be transmitted electronically to INEC Elections results Viewing Portal (IReV) after the appropriate result forms have been duly filled and signed by the INEC officer in charge and party agents where available. The safety net in the Senate is that where there is a failure of electronic transmission, the manual system will serve. That, in the view of many commentators, is to prevent situations where the machines will fail, thereby preventing real-time transmission of results. Many experts in technology, including Elon Musk of the United States of America, did not recommend electronic voting. They would rather have paper ballots that will be counted and manually filed. Elon Musk, a frontline investor in tech, agrees that any computer can be hacked. In Nigeria, the problem is more prevalent because of the grave infrastructural deficit in the country. Electricity supply is in fits and starts, cyber security infrastructure is deficient, most rural areas have poor network reception, and the population is great in those places. By this analysis of these experts, especially that of Elon Musk, it is not safe to depend on real-time transmission of results. In a way, Senate President Godswill Akpabio and his Senate have saved Nigeria from a potential problem from which the nation may not recover if there is a technology failure and there is no alternative to real-time transmission of results. Some have felt it could lead to a logjam that the courts or any other institution may not be able to resolve. Those who hold this opinion even think that those who are agitating for real-time electronic transmission are laying mines to destroy democracy in the country.
It is possible, but it is also necessary to discern the hearts of the current leadership and those before them, at least since 1999. Why have leaders not given good attention to the nation’s decaying infrastructure? President Tinubu went so far as to cajole Nigerians during his 2023 campaign by saying that if he did not provide electricity to the nation and especially solve the problem of estimated bills by the various discos, Nigerians should not give him a second term. Those who listened to him then, including this writer, did not bother to find out that the reason Tinubu did not present to them an actual blueprint for electricity infrastructure was that he had no idea. It is not enough to say you would do it “anyhow.” Anyhow is not how. Now three years into his administration, the electricity situation is far worse despite all the stratification of electricity consumption that transfers supply from the poor to the rich that his Minister of Power Adebayo Adelabu designed. When the leader pays no attention to infrastructure, they are preparing for the next election. You and I would think leaders would want to please us by giving us excellent infrastructure, but they know better that if they do, we will have elections that they will not win. If they don’t, they will lie about bad infrastructure to provide an electoral process that they can easily manipulate. It is as simple as that. And that really is the reason why leaders have not paid good attention to good infrastructure.
When President Bola Tinubu wanted the Lagos-Calabar coastal road, he knew how to accomplish it. He knew how to connect with his friend Gilbert Chagoury because they know how to do deals. When the late president Muhammadu Buhari wanted the railway extended to the Niger Republic, his place of origin, he knew how to take a loan from China and cajole Rotimi Amaechi to execute the job. Now relations between the Republic of Niger and Nigeria are at an all time low. And yet generations of Nigerians yet unborn will pay off that loan to China. We can have these infrastructure problems solved within an administration, but it doesn’t pay the politicians. One prominent politician friend in Ibadan told me politicians don’t want change, but he agreed that change can be compelled by God. How? Nigerians will have to quit their timidity and rise against the self-interest of the politicians. We are in a tunnel, and we may never see the light at the end of the tunnel. 2027 is already here, and the results seem apparent. The election will be rigged because there is no infrastructure to support a rigging-proof election. Atiku Abubakar, Peter Obi, Rabiu Musa Kwankwanso, Rotimi Amaechi, and others have handed over the presidency to Tinubu again. The courts will again make tons of millions of naira giving the elections to those who have not won them.
First Published in METRO
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Tunde Akande is both a journalist and pastor. He earned a Master's degree in Mass Communication from the University of Lagos.
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