Former President of the Nigerian Bar Association, NBA, Dr. Olisa Agbakoba, SAN, has called on the National Assembly to urgently amend the Electoral Act to expressly provide for mandatory electronic transmission of election results ahead of the 2027 general elections.
Agbakoba said failure to embed electronic transmission in the Electoral Act would perpetuate Nigeria’s cycle of disputed elections, prolonged litigation and declining public confidence in the democratic process.
In a statement, on Monday, the senior lawyer argued that Nigeria’s electoral framework has remained plagued by legal uncertainty due to weak regulatory processes not backed by clear statutory authority.
He noted that despite frequent amendments to the Electoral Act, the same challenges persist, forcing courts to play a decisive role in determining election outcomes.
According to him, the 2023 general elections exposed a major gap in the law, particularly regarding electronic transmission of results. Although the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, deployed the Result Viewing Portal, IReV, the Supreme Court ruled that the innovation lacked legal force because it was not expressly provided for in the Electoral Act 2022.
“The court held that electronic transmission, appearing only in INEC’s Regulations and Guidelines, is not legally binding, and that the IReV portal serves merely for public viewing and is not admissible as evidence of results in election petitions,” Agbakoba stated.
He said the ruling underscored the reality that without explicit statutory backing, electronic transmission remains optional and legally inconsequential, regardless of its transparency or efficiency.
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Agbakoba warned that the absence of electronic transmission creates an almost insurmountable evidentiary burden for petitioners challenging election results. He recalled the observation of the late Justice Pat Acholonu in Buhari v. Obasanjo (2005), where the jurist expressed doubt that a petitioner could successfully challenge a presidential election, given the need to call hundreds of thousands of witnesses across the country within limited timelines.
He noted that since 1999, no presidential election petition has succeeded, largely because verifying results from over 176,000 polling units nationwide is practically impossible under the current legal framework.
Drawing lessons from history, Agbakoba described the June 12, 1993 election as Nigeria’s gold standard for electoral credibility, attributing its success to transparency rather than technology. He said the Option A4 system allowed immediate, open verification of results at polling units, building public confidence despite being entirely manual.
“If manual transparency could deliver such credibility in 1993, imagine the impact of real-time electronic transmission in today’s digital age,” he said, adding that electronic transmission would provide immediate verification, tamper-proof digital records and greater efficiency and security.
Agbakoba said the ongoing legislative process presents a rare opportunity for the National Assembly to resolve the issue decisively before the 2027 elections.
He urged lawmakers to act without delay by embedding mandatory real-time electronic transmission of results in the Electoral Act, stressing that doing so would remove ambiguity, close legal loopholes and restore confidence in Nigeria’s electoral system.
“Without this amendment, we risk repeating the same cycle of disputed elections, protracted litigation and damaged democratic credibility that has plagued the Fourth Republic,” he said, adding: “Democracy demands nothing less.”
