Prominent constitutional lawyer and former Nigerian Bar Association president, Dr. Olisa Agbakoba (SAN), has called on the National Assembly to urgently amend the Electoral Act to make electronic transmission of election results compulsory, warning that failure to do so could lead Nigeria into another round of disputed elections and prolonged court battles ahead of the 2027 general polls.
In a statement issued on Monday titled “Ending the Cycle – Why Electronic Transmission Should Be Enshrined in the Electoral Act Before 2027,” Agbakoba said Nigeria’s electoral system remains stuck in legal uncertainty due to the lack of clear statutory backing for modern electoral innovations.
He noted that despite repeated amendments to the Electoral Act with each election cycle, fundamental weaknesses persist, leaving courts to determine election outcomes long after votes have been cast.
“The vicious cycle must end,” Agbakoba said, stressing that the absence of strong regulatory frameworks with explicit legal authority continues to undermine the credibility of elections.
According to him, the 2023 general election clearly exposed this flaw. While the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) introduced the Result Viewing Portal (IReV) to enable electronic transmission and public access to results, the Supreme Court later ruled that the platform had no legal force since it was not expressly provided for in the Electoral Act 2022.
The court held that electronic transmission, being contained only in INEC’s Regulations and Guidelines, could not be regarded as legally binding evidence in election petitions. As a result, Agbakoba said, the IReV portal was effectively reduced to a transparency tool without evidentiary value.
“The message was unmistakable. Without explicit statutory provision, electronic transmission remains optional and legally inconsequential, no matter how transparent or efficient it may be,” he said.
Agbakoba warned that this legal gap places an almost impossible burden on election petitioners. He referenced the late Justice Pat Acholonu’s remarks in Buhari v. Obasanjo (2005), where the jurist questioned whether a petitioner could realistically succeed in challenging a presidential election, given the need to call witnesses from hundreds of thousands of polling units nationwide.
Justice Acholonu had also cautioned that even a successful petition could amount to an “empty victory,” as the winner might complete the four-year term before the case was resolved. Agbakoba said this prediction has proven accurate, noting that no presidential election petition has succeeded since 1999.
“This is precisely because verifying results from over 176,000 polling units within constitutionally limited timelines is a practical impossibility,” he said.
Drawing from history, Agbakoba pointed to the June 12, 1993, presidential election as Nigeria’s gold standard for electoral credibility. He said the election earned widespread trust not because of sophisticated technology, but due to the transparent Option A4 system, which allowed voters, party agents and observers to openly verify results at polling units before collation.
“If manual transparency could achieve such credibility in 1993, imagine the transformative impact of real-time electronic transmission in our digital age,” he said.
Agbakoba argued that making electronic transmission mandatory would combine instant verification with tamper-proof digital records, delivering greater transparency, security and accountability. He described the ongoing review of the Electoral Act as a “monumental opportunity” for lawmakers to act decisively before 2027.
“The National Assembly must embed mandatory real-time electronic transmission of results in the Electoral Act, remove all ambiguity, and close the legal loopholes that have been used to undermine the will of the people,” he said.
