SAMSON ITODO writes what the electoral body should do to build trust in election results
Election results management remains the most contested and consequential phase of Nigeria’s electoral process. It is the point at which votes cast by citizens are translated into electoral outcomes. It is here that the inconceivable becomes routine: results are altered, substituted, or manufactured outright; officials are compromised; and security agencies, shedding the garb of neutrality, interfere with collation to engineer a preferred outcome, mostly to protect a regime or oust an incumbent.
This is the stage at which the integrity, independence and resilience of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) face their most severe test.
One opportunity to strengthen confidence was the reform of the Electoral Act in 2026. Although the Act makes electronic transmission of polling-unit results to the IREV portal mandatory, the proviso allowing the physical result sheet to override the results transmitted electronically makes the result management process vulnerable to manipulation, and it defeats the entire purpose of electronic transmission.
This is of utmost concern because evidence shows the physical result sheet is the classic instrument of manipulation. Where a result has been altered on paper, it is the altered figure that governs collation even when the image on the IReV is the accurate reflection of what transpired at the polling unit. Whatever its stated rationale, the proviso provides legal protection for the very manipulation that electronic transmission was designed to prevent.
