How Nigeria's National Assembly Can Make the Electoral System Impregnable on Electronic Transmission to Prevent Fraud During Election Result Collation

Abstract

For many years, stakeholders in the election process in Nigeria had rued perceived manipulation of each round of elections in Nigeria, owing largely to the fact that the result management system had essentially been manual with the attendant weaknesses, leading to proliferation of post-election petitions and of exacerbation of rancour and tension after each round of elections. The Electoral Act 2022 was signed into law with the aim of legitimising the e-management of election results, as an addition to the existing manual processes, by putting in place safeguards towards promoting the integrity of the pre-election, balloting, and especially post-balloting processes thereby entrenching greater transparency in the election process and ensuring that each round of elections came out as a true reflection of the will of the electorate. Unfortunately, in 2023, Nigerian Courts took the position that electronic transmission was not an indispensable requirement of the Electoral Act, 2022. Since then, a new wave of clamour and agitation to make electronic transmission a sine-qua-non in the election process in Nigeria has sprung up. The purpose of this piece is to present a template, as an example, to the National Assembly of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, on how to make the Electoral Act impregnable on electronic transmission, thereby closing the door on perpetrators of election result management frauds in Nigeria, thereby installing greater credibility and transparency in the election system. In presenting the draft below, the author does not lay any claim to being perfect; the aim is to provoke further discussions in the interest of democracy and good governance in Nigeria, because the writer believes that the best way to nip in the bud opportunities for fraud in election results management in Nigeria, is to leave no room for discretion on the part of election managers. Creating exceptions and granting discretions gives fraudulent election managers a leeway to truncate the process.