By UCHE UGBOAJAH

A few days ago, the Senate passed what it called the 2026 Electoral Bill. The House of Representatives had earlier passed its version of the same bill, and all that will happen next is the harmonisation of the two bills for onward transmission to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu for assent. What is interesting is that since the bill was passed, the Senate has been running from pillar to post, deploying wordplay—not facts—in trying to explain to highly enraged Nigerian citizens why the mandatory transmission of results from polling units in real-time, the most important item on the electoral reform agenda demanded by the public they claim to represent, was guillotined.

Anyone conversant with the Nigerian electoral system and process since 1999 would readily admit that the biggest challenge has been how to ensure the integrity of votes by the election management body, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), in such a manner that election results reflect the actual vote choices of the Nigerian electorate. And the people rightly believe that real-time transmission of results will definitely increase the possibility of a free and fair election.

Since 1999, the quality of our general elections has been in progressive decline, thereby creating the phenomenon that the erudite Professor Chidi Odinkalu has aptly captured as the “Selectorate”—a situation whereby court judges have displaced citizens in deciding who governs them. It gets even worse with the fact that many Nigerians no longer see the judiciary as a just arbiter but as a partner in the country’s election-rigging machine.

Lest we forget, after the electoral charade of 2007, President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua admitted that his victory was indeed tainted and proceeded with ambitious and unpretentious electoral reforms by setting up the Justice Uwais Electoral Reforms Committee, which came out with far-reaching recommendations to sanitise the process and restore fidelity to vote choice. While Yar’Adua did not live long to see through the changes he envisaged, his successor, Goodluck Jonathan, by far remains the only Nigerian president who, by words and deeds, showed real commitment to electoral transparency—even to the point of embracing the first-mover disadvantage that led to his own defeat in 2015.

Even the late General Muhammadu Buhari, who all his lifetime wore the toga of a “man of integrity” like an Olympic medal around his neck, did not have the courage to improve on what he not only inherited but also what favoured him to become president after at least four attempts. Instead, typical of his selfish and atavistic nature, he resorted to self-preservation when national duty called. He dodged signing into law a very progressive electoral bill that guaranteed mandatory real-time electronic transmission of results in 2019 under the pretext of lateness; appointed alleged members of his party as INEC Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs); and again refused to sign into law the 2022 Electoral Bill until it was watered down to the infamous 2022 Electoral Act.

After all the litigious contestations over the conduct of the 2023 general election, Nigerians and civil society, not minding the weakness of the main opposition politicians, decided they had had enough and 'set forth before dawn' in the march to secure a more transparent election in 2027. This promptness was predicated on a deathly suspicion of the treacherous attributes of the present National Assembly, which has proven to be worse than the rubber-stamp 9th Assembly. Indeed, the National Assembly headed by Senator Godswill Akpabio—a man who knows a thing or two about electoral opacity—did not inspire any hope in Nigerians toward the amendment processes of the Electoral Act from the outset.

Not many believed this Senate President could midwife a law that would improve vote integrity. Recall that the former governor of Imo State, Rochas Okorocha, had insinuated that the re-election of Akpabio and his predecessor, Senate President Ahmad Lawan, was the eighth wonder of the world, seeing that both contested the APC presidential ticket with President Tinubu and therefore could not have participated in the senatorial primaries as prescribed by the Electoral Act. But they found a way around the law. It is this kind of shenanigans that Nigerians want an amended Electoral Act to clean out, but ironically, beneficiaries of these illegalities are the ones driving the process.

In essence, at the heart of the Electoral Act amendment is the politics of self-interest and self-preservation. I have heard a civil society leader, Clement Nwankwo, say that President Tinubu has nothing to do with the public betrayal of trust by the Senate in this amendment process. To say that President Tinubu has no interest in what transpired at the Red Chamber, which has sent shock and un-quantifiable disappointment to Nigerians, is merely being politically correct. The same Tinubu who, a few days ago in the Wike–Fubara debacle, declared his FCT minister—who is not a member of his own party (at least for now)—the leader of both the APC and the opposition PDP in Rivers State is not naïve enough to close his eyes to what is possible with a free and fair election, which is supposed to be the major contention of the Electoral Act amendment. Even then, Senator Akpabio has not, in any shape or form since he emerged as Senate President, displayed any capacity for independent thinking or the pursuit of any public good. He is either “sending prayers” to his colleague senators or “eating while the people protest over hardship.”

But seriously, what the Senate has done with the Electoral Act amendment is heartbreaking for Nigerians who see yet another opportunity for a free and fair election evaporate with just a drop of Akpabio’s gavel. This has huge implications not only for the sustenance of democracy but also for the survival of Nigeria as a country. If the joint session of the National Assembly goes ahead to harmonise this piece of legislation, it will definitely ensure that in 2027 Nigerians will have another “hated” president and governors. President Tinubu said it himself at a dinner hosted in his honour by the Benue State governor after the Yelwata massacre. He admitted that he knows Nigerians hate him, but that today he is still their president. A free and fair election, while it can produce an incompetent president, governor, or senator, certainly cannot produce a popularly hated president, governor, or senator. That is not part of the logic of democracy.

Again, Nigeria has not generally been blessed with a forthright INEC chairman since 1999, except perhaps during the interlude of Professor Attahiru Jega. We thought we had seen the worst with Professor Maurice Iwu until Buhari brought in Professor Mahmood Yakubu. His dishonesty, prevarications, and biases in the conduct of the 2023 general election have forced many citizens to check out of any future electoral arrangements in the country, seeing that declared results do not reflect vote choices. Even in the heat of national anger over the 2023 elections, many thought the Edo State gubernatorial election held a redemptive opportunity for Yakubu. No. In Edo, he continued to better himself in the art of manufactured results.

The new INEC chairman, Professor Joash Amupitan, has equally started on the wrong footing with the handling of the Anambra election and the monkey game INEC is playing with the PDP and LP, conveniently couched as respecting court orders. Please do not get me wrong: This does not in any way imply that Governor Charles Soludo did not win the election, but a lot of shenanigans, apart from vote-buying, were thrown into the mix. For instance, the purported “defeat of Peter Obi” in his polling booth is one to watch. That may have been set as an alibi for what is planned to happen in 2027, especially without mandatory transmission of results by INEC. Yes, if results emerge that Obi lost in Anambra in the presidential election in 2027 (assuming he is on the ballot), a reference point has already been created to justify it. I am sure you get it.

All INEC chairmen have pleaded that they were following court orders and the law. What the Senate did with the bungling of the 2026 Electoral Act amendment is to further bring out the worst in an already compromised electoral management body that many now see as an annex of the ruling party. Yet there is a reason election management bodies all over the world are set up to be independent. It is because elections serve to reward and to punish candidates. They reward winners with a mandate to govern and punish losers with either non-renewal of mandate or denial of access to power. Unfortunately, in our electoral system, that sanctioning power of elections—at the core of the theory of popular sovereignty—has been stolen from the people by a rigging machine made up of crooked politicians, compromised security agencies, corrupt INEC, and a complicit judiciary.

Nigerian voters are like their counterparts all over the world. They are rational and want the best for themselves and their communities. What has failed them is an electoral process that does not respect their vote choices. In the end, that has led to bad governance at all levels and the creation of electoral myths of “political strongmen and women” who claim to single-handedly install governors and ministers but do not stand any chance in a free and fair election. This was what the 2023 presidential election taught us before Yakubu’s INEC glitched the process. I have said it before: an Omoyele Sowore can trounce a Tinubu in a free and fair election in Lagos. If you are still wondering why all the senators—not just Akpabio alone—are running away from mandatory real-time transmission of results and cooking up all manner of sophistry as justification, herein lies your answer.

•Uche Ugboajah, a political scientist, is Editor-in-Chief of Ikengaonline and can be reached at ucheugboajah@gmail.com

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