Nigeria’s ambitious plan to evolve to electronic transmission of election results faces a critical reality check as the country grapples with a significant shortfall in its broadband penetration targets, a major dent in its digital agenda.

Despite the Tuesday legislative U-turn to mandate real-time result uploads, data by the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC) reveal that the digital backbone required to support the migration is far from ready, particularly in rural areas.

Spread across the northern and southern parts of the country are 4,834 communities, which the NCC classifies as unserved/underserved areas. With much of the hinterlands bogged down by insecurity, the prospects that investment in the areas would catch up with the rest of the country before the next election are remote.

Nigeria would have been in a vantage position for real-time electronic transmission of election results if it had not failed to attain significant milestones in its two national broadband roadmaps, spanning 2013 to 2020 and 2020 to 2025.

With the 2025 target unrealised, the country is at the cusp of another plan expected to cover another five years.

The National Broadband Plan (NBP) 2020–2025 set an aggressive target of 70 per cent broadband penetration by 2025. However, as of January 2026, the country was stalled at approximately 50.58 per cent, missing its milestone by nearly 20 points.

This shortfall means millions of Nigerians, particularly in semi-urban and rural areas, still lack the high-speed access necessary for full participation in the digital economy.

While the country boasts of 82.87 per cent teledensity, the number of active telephone connections (both mobile and fixed-line) for every 100 people within a specific geographic area, expressed in a percentage, 4G network remains the dominant technology with 52.99 per cent reach. Lower 2G is 37.77 per cent; 3G has 5.91 per cent, while 5G controls 3.77, the NCC said.

The implication is that despite 4G reach, a large portion of the population remains stuck on legacy 2G and 3G networks. The speed gap prevents users from effectively using modern digital tools like video conferencing, advanced e-learning and high-definition streaming.

Going by the NBP 2020 to 2025 agenda, there should have been a massive expansion of the terrestrial fibre optic backbone to reach the hinterlands, with a target of 120,000km of fibre.

An estimated 21 million Nigerians across 4,834 communities, mostly in rural areas, still lack access to basic mobile connectivity. The Minister of Communications, Innovation and Digital Economy, Bosun Tijani, stated this last February after the Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting.

In April 2025, the Universal Service Provision Fund (USPF) reported that in 2013, the number of people living in unserved and underserved areas was 36.8 million. It fell to 23 million by 2024.

Secretary of USPF, Yomi Arowosafe, said the 23 million unserved/underserved people are housed in over 3000 communities, predominantly in rural areas and still lack basic mobile connectivity.

Checks by The Guardian showed that the unserved and underserved communities are largely concentrated in the north. The communities face the most acute digital isolation, leaving many citizens disconnected. Large swathes of these communities have experienced government-mandated telecommunications shutdowns to curb banditry. Even when lifted, infrastructure remained damaged or unrepaired by telcos fearful of returning to the sites.

For instance, in Zamfara state, Local Government Areas (LGAs) including Shinkafi, Zurmi, Birnin Magaji and Kaura Namoda are largely underserved. Other communities include Sardauna, Kurmi, Karim Lamido, Illela, Sabon Birni, Isa, Gudu, Birnin Gwari, Kachia, Kaura, Giwa, Kajuru and Chikun.

In the southern region, unserved areas are largely in the riverine areas of Bayelsa, Delta and Ondo. There are also border communities, where the population densities are low and the return on investment for telecom operators is minimal.

This supposed digital deficit creates a precarious situation for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). While the law now demands electronic transmission, the infrastructure remains a patchwork of high-speed urban hubs and vast rural blind spots.

The disparity in Internet access is the primary challenge for the electronic transmission plan. While urban centres boast 57 per cent penetration, rural communities lag at just 23 per cent.

In areas where 2G and 3G still dominate, or where signals vanish entirely, the mandate for real-time uploads becomes a near logistical impossibility.

Critics argued that forcing electronic transmission without the underlying fibre-optic infrastructure risks, among other things, result in delays because of data bottlenecks in low-bandwidth areas, especially when rural results arrive days after urban counts, fueling manipulation theories.

They argued that there could also be a system failure. For instance, the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and IReVportal require stable handshakes with servers that current rural networks cannot consistently provide.

For emphasis, major milestones were missed in the NBPs because of several systemic failures that have hamstrung the NCC’s efforts. This includes a power crisis. As of today, over 30,000 base stations rely on diesel generators due to the frequent collapse of the national grid. This inflates operational costs by up to 40 per cent, leaving little capital for expansion.

There has been a huge spike in infrastructure vandalism. Operators report an average of 30 to 43 daily fibre cuts across the country. MTN said it recorded a surge in network disruptions in 2025, suffering 9,218 fibre cuts.

NCC Executive Vice Chairman, Aminu Maida, described the trend as a major threat to Nigeria’s digital economy ambitions. He said the scale of vandalism, 19,384 fibre cuts, 3,241 cases of equipment theft, and over 19,000 denials of access to telecom sites from January to August 2025 remained a huge challenge.

There is also the right-of-way (RoW) issue. Despite Federal pleas, several state governments continue to charge prohibitive fees for laying fibre-optic cables, treating digital infrastructure as a cash cow rather than a public utility.

The Senate’s decision to mandate electronic transmission, following intense pressure from civil society and labour unions, is seen as a victory for transparency but a nightmare for implementation.

At a stakeholder briefing recently, Maida warned that weak broadband does not just slow digital systems; it breaks them. He stressed that “Until broadband is treated as essential infrastructure, on par with roads and electricity, the digital economy, and by extension, digital democracy, will remain exclusive.”

However, as far back as 2021, in this report by The Guardian, titled: ‘Electronic transmission: Network providers’ optimism versus lawmakers’ pessimism’, operators expressed readiness for electronic transmission of results with some minor adjustments to the state of telecoms infrastructure in the country as of then. When contacted, they still aligned with the same position.

Chairman, Association of Licensed Telecoms Operators of Nigeria (ALTON), Gbenga Adebayo, said the current infrastructure in the sector can be upgraded for electronic transmission of poll results in 12 months.

Adebayo said the NCC has said that what is required is a minimum of 3G coverage, that is, third-generation coverage, which is able to send voice, data, text and video information simultaneously with minimal latency, and reliability.

He also pointed out that where added interfaces are required, either to compress or encrypt the information for better security, it is easier to do that on 3G networks than it is on 2G.

According to him, the requirement would be to have sites that cover areas where polling centres have been upgraded to 3G, and this will be to increase the backbone capacity of affected sites.

He added that this will also include replacing and upgrading the capacity of the last-mile radios on those sites, as well as other interfaces that will now deliver 3G services above the 2G that is currently in the affected locations.

Adebayo further added that the task is to increase the transmission capacity to those sites and thereafter upgrade the elements that deliver last-mile services from 2G to 3G.

The ALTON chairman, who declined to estimate the cost for upgrades “because of several variables,” noted that some of the variables include the distance of the sites to the backbone.

“In some cases, it could be a few kilometres, it could also be several hundred or tens of hundreds of kilometres. In the second instance, it depends on the capacity of the radios that are installed for the last mile. Those cost elements vary from location to location. So, I wouldn’t be able to talk about cost. I can talk about the turnaround time for the delivery.”

Adebayo said e-transmission of results is not as complex as it is made to look, explaining: “It’s not like you are looking for a special card reader, or card device to do some form of algorithm or processing. No. All they are saying is, ‘take a result and transmit it. Instead of sending it by physical post, dispatch or courier, send it by electronic means.’ Simply put, it is like sending you a text message instead of a letter. That is actually what electronic transmission is talking about. It’s not necessarily saying a technical process is required for reasons of uploading, downloading, coding and decoding of the data. That is not what it is saying,” he stressed.

Also at the same time, a former president of the Association of Telecom Companies of Nigeria (ATCON) and currently a Director at IPNX, Olusola Teniola, said: “Nigeria is ready and e-voting at its simplest level can be performed using the current 2G technology. This will suffice for more than 87 per cent of the population where polling stations are in areas of GSM coverage. Note that anything requiring data transmission that involves heavy data usage will be limited by EDGE and 3G technology. So, the best is to keep things very simple and send the minimum amount of data that can verify a citizen’s vote.”

While Nigeria’s current broadband gap creates a steep hurdle for real-time electronic transmission, several emerging economies have navigated similar digital divides by employing different strategies.

According to aceproject.org, countries that have implemented electronic voting include Brazil, Venezuela, Paraguay, Belgium, Spain, Canada, Switzerland, Bhutan, Germany, India, the Netherlands and Panama.

The primary lesson from these nations is that transmission is not a one-size-fits-all process; it requires a blend of offline resilience and hybrid connectivity.

For instance, India, which shares Nigeria’s challenge of vast rural areas and intermittent power, uses a system that largely avoids the broadband trap.

According to checks, India’s Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) are standalone, battery-powered devices that are never connected to the Internet.

With it, votes are recorded on control units at the polling station. After the poll, the units are physically sealed and transported to a central counting centre.

This model proves that electronic does not have to mean online. However, Nigeria’s current legislative demand for real-time transmission makes the Indian model a tough fit unless the law is amended to allow for secure physical transport of the data units.

Another example is the Philippines model. The country, an archipelago of over 7,000 islands with varying connectivity, provides perhaps the closest blueprint for Nigeria.

It uses Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines that transmit results via the best available local network (GPRS, 3G or even satellite).

Checks showed that if a polling station has zero signal, the machine saves the results to a secure SD card. The electoral officers then move the card or the entire machine to a transmission hub (usually a municipal office) with verified broadband or satellite access.

In terms of relevance to Nigeria, this approach could mitigate Nigeria’s 23 per cent rural broadband penetration by establishing regional transmission nodes.

Speaking on the issue, a telecom expert, Kehinde Aluko, aligned with the Philippines-style hybrid approach.

According to him, Nigeria could designate schools or government buildings with fibre-optic access as Digital Command Centres where results from offline rural areas are brought for upload.

He emphasised partnership with companies like Starlink or NigComSat to provide temporary high-speed “bubbles” around rural collation centres on Election Day and moving away from the national grid by integrating solar-powered batteries into all transmission hardware. (The Guardian)