Ehichioya Ezomon
…references Saturday Area Council Election malady in the FCT, Abuja
Nigerians heap all blame of the country’s problems on the leadership, which means politicians, who’ve been running their lives like personal estates. But the ongoing debate and controversies trailing the National Assembly (NASS) amendment to the 2022 Electoral Act, and signing of the review into law by President Bola Tinubu, have shown that Civil Society Organisations (CSOs) and the Media are major contributors to the problems of Nigeria as a democratic nation in progress.
The issue of the day on the road to the 2027 General Election is the clamour by Nigerians for electronic transmission of results in “real-time” as a panacea to the opposition’s claims of massive manipulation of the 2023 poll by the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), its then-candidate Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
With the CSOs and the media in the thick of the agitation and protests to “force the NASS to approve real-time transmission of results,” the questions to ask include: Are they altruistic in advocating for certain issues that may impact the 2027 election? Are they ignorantly and glibly aping the opposition without a grasp of the underlying consequences? How can they sound like and behave in sync with the opposition in matters that won’t ensure electoral fidelity but to further perpetrate and perpetuate fraudulent elections?
Haven’t the CSOs and the media decipher the opposition alleged “agenda” to game the 2027 poll – even as they divert attention from their real intent with their hollar against the APC – to gain what they couldn’t achieve in relatively-competitive contests in 2023? As “guardians of democracy,” are the CSOs and the media conniving, and in bed with the opposition?
The lead agitators of real-time transmission of results were reportedly determined, but failed after “millions of attempts” in 2023 to hack into, and manipulate the INEC digital systems, including the INEC Results Viewing (IReV) portal, where poll results are uploaded for members of the public to access timeously.
There’re reports of manipulation of the 2023 election across Nigeria, particularly in a section of the country where a presidential candidate unprecedentedly scored average of 95% votes in the states within his geopolitical zone, and also won in unlikely states in other zones. But what’ve Nigerians, especially the CSOs and the media, done in such a situation to protect democracy they claim to cherish and uphold?
Nigerians have neglected to interrogate how such a “winning formula” was possible without the poll being rigged, which’s as clear as daylight from the result sheets (Form EC8As) issued after the collation and tabulation of votes at the over 176,000 polling units in the 36 States and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, Nigeria’s capital city!
For example, screwed votes in Form EC8As abound on social media, but two polling units’ results stand out as a common reference: One from Abia State in the South-East and the other from Lagos State in the South-West. In the result sheet from the South-East, at Amuzu Hall, Amuzu, Ohiaukwu I in Umuahia South, one Okeke Cynthia acted as both the Presiding Officer and “Polling “Agents” for six political parties, including ADC 1 (vote), APC 2, APGA 2, LP 218, PDP 12, and ZLP 1 vote, totaling 236 votes.
To indicate that these figures were obviously allocated to favour the LP, rather than reflecting the votes genuinely and lawfully cast, Okeke Cynthia signed the Form EC8A as the unit’s Presiding Officer and “Polling Agents” for the six parties that “scored” votes from the 236 “valid” votes cast.
In a different rigging format, the scores recorded for six parties in Form EC8A from the South-West, at Ademola Oluwole Junction I, Egbeda/Alimosho, Alimosho, Lagos, were mutilated, to increase APC’s score from 12 to 36 votes, reduce LP’s votes from 69 to 41, and PDP score from 54 to 6, as the ADC, ADP and NRM retained their 1 vote each, bringing the “total valid votes” to 86.
While one Shobowale Tolani recorded the “votes cast” and siged the Form EC8A, three different signatures were appended against the scores for the APC, LP and PDP. But a closer look reveals that the same ink was applied to record all relevant and mutilated poll figures and signatures by the “Presiding Officer” Tolani, and the three “Polling Agents” that signed the Form EC8A on behalf of the APC, LP and PDP, respectively.
One wonders why the mutilation of the results sheet, Form EC8A, with the supposed connivance of the APC, which increased its score from 12 to ONLY 36, reduced LP’s votes from 69 to 41, and PDP’s votes from 54 to 6, and allowed the LP to win the polling unit! This is abracadabra that only the LP can explain!
The legerdemain here is that the Form EC8As from the South-East and South-West were a product of electoral fraud – with the LP favoured in the South-East polling unit that’s “neatly rigged,” and in the South-West polling unit that’s “untidily manipulated” – which Forms were probably scanned and transmitted via the Biomodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines to the IReV in “real-time” or delayed time, and accepted as votes freely and fairly cast.
Yet, the same presidential candidate and those who rigged “perfectly with no alterations and cancellations” on his behalf are the ones – joined by the CSOs and the media – shouting at the rooftops that Tinubu, the APC and INEC “stole their mandate,” and displaced the candidate from the first position to the third place.
The poser: Was the candidate able to prove, at the election tribunals, the over “55m votes” – more than double the total votes of all the parties at the election – that his followers bandied on social media? NO! The candidate maintained at the Presidential Election Petitions Court (PEPC) (Appeal Court) and the Supreme Court that he only wanted to prove that the process of the ballot was faulty.”
For failing to prove his case, it took the Supreme Court panel of Justices only 72 seconds to affirm, on appeal, the PEPC’s dismissal of the candidate’s petition as “lacking in merit.” That judgment ought to bring closure to the whirlwind case that put Nigeria on the edge of the cliff, with the opposition simultaneously calling for a military coup to overturn the alleged “flawed election” that they helped orchestrate.
This leads to the main claims of the candidate and his supporters: That they’re robbed of victory due to delays in the “transmission” of the poll results to the IReV; that a substantial number of the uploaded results was illegible; and that INEC’s alleged “technical glitch” in its servers was “contrived” to favour APC’s candidate, now President Tinubu.
The opposition, CSOs and the media wanted, and continue to insist that “real-time transmission of results from polling units to the IReV” be expressly codified in the 2026 Electoral Act that Tinubu assented to on Thursday, February 19, 2026.
Their main grouse is the NASS insertion of a proviso that gives allowance for manual collation of results if electronic transmission fails owing to communication challenges (such as could’ve happened on Saturday, February 21, 2026, in the Area Council Election in the FCT, Abuja, and bye-elections in Kano State and Rivers State, accordingly).
This, they argue, will give the ever-manipulative politicians – allegedly only in the ruling APC – the alibi to induce malfunctioning of the BVAS for the transmission of results to the IReV, “in order for INEC to have recourse to manual collation that’s susceptible to manipulation.”
Another question for the “real-time” agitators: Has Nigeria adopted “electronic voting”? How can we achieve real-time transmission of results if what we do – save accreditation of voters and transmission of results to the IReV – is manual balloting and collation from the polling unit to the ward collation centre, to local government collation centre, to state collation centre, and finally to the national collation centre?
As one Tejudeen Adigun @Tejudeen Adigun observes lately in a post on Facebook, those agitating for abandoning of manual balloting are driven by “emotions and not reality.” According to him, “Who and what determines ‘as quickly as possible’ (the transmission of results to the IReV in real-time)? How will ‘manual’ not come in if: 1) ballot papers are used; 2) how do you count ballot papers if not manually; 3) how will you write results on result sheets if not manually; 4) what is to be transferred if not the scanned result sheets?
“Second stage: 1) How will INEC populate (distribute) the (ballot) papers at the ward level if not manually; 2) How will party agents (sign) on the results sheets if not manually? This last stage will repeat itself at the Local Government, States and National collation centres – all manually done!
“INEC will NOT use results uploaded or transmitted ‘real time’ on IReV to collate results at these collation centres. INEC will use results sheets at lower levels to do the collation! So, I ask you, what again, what is ‘real time’ transmission and how has it impacted the INEC collation process? You see, you are all on a goose chase.”
As both the Appeal and Supreme Courts affirmed in their judgments from the 2023 presidential election, “the IReV isn’t a collation system” but a portal for viewing results by the public. So long as Nigeria hasn’t adopted electronic voting, the IReV can’t replace manual collation and announcement of results. The opposition, CSOs, the media and other advocates should engage the NASS, to persuade members to adopt electronic voting, not for 2027 but other future elections!
One more question by concerned Nigerians: Have agitators for real-time transmission of results decided to aid and abet the opposition to rig the 2027 election, and cause such manipulated results to be uploaded to the IReV, for which they want to blackmail, browbeat and force the INEC to unlawfully turn into a collation system? That’d be rigging the system “real-time,” and stripping the electoral umpire of its independence!
Even with the “partial” approval of electronic transmission of results in “real-time” to the IReV, the alleged manipulation of the 2023 presidential poll will be a child’s play compared to the feared wholesale rigging of the 2027 ballot. As starkly shown in 2023, only one candidate was capable of securing block votes from his zone, and there’s every likelihood he’ll repeat that feat in 2027 with bulk rigging.
Either out of ignorance, connivance, collaboration or intimidation, the results therefrom will be uploaded to the IReV, for real-time viewing, to show the world that the candidate’s won the election – not from a free, fair, credible and transparent voting, but high-voltage fraudulence at the polling units, which’s the reason for the intense clamour for “real-time” transmission of results from polling units!
Sadly, Nigerians are afraid to talk about these “bad things,” to avoid being stereotyped as tribal bigots fanning hatred against people of a particular ethnic group, who, in 2023, executed the electoral heist in their zone, and elsewhere they’ve strongholds across Nigeria. These issues remain, and will manifest in multiple fashions and phases in the 2027 poll. And Nigerians, will once again, have cause to blame politicians and their leaders!
.elsewhere they’ve strongholds across Nigeria. These issues remain, and will manifest in multiple fashions and phases in the 2027 poll. And Nigerians, will once again, have cause to blame politicians and their leaders!
• Mr Ezomon, Journalist and Media Consultant, writes from Lagos, Nigeria. Can be reached on X, Threads, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp @EhichioyaEzomon. Tel: 08033078357
Abracadabra: From 12 to 1212 votes for APC and forgetfully left the total Valid Votes at 211
