A former electoral commissioner, Mike Igini, has issued a stark warning to National Assembly members: their attempt to water down the electronic transmission of election results may cost them their own seats in the next election cycle.
Igini, who previously served as Resident Electoral Commissioner for Cross River State, cautioned that the controversial amendment requiring conditions for real-time transmission of polling unit results represents what he called “institutional self-harm” by federal lawmakers.
Speaking as the National Assembly moves to reconcile different versions of the Electoral Act Amendment Bill, Igini urged senators and House members to learn from their predecessors who paid a heavy political price for leaving electoral loopholes open.
Igini argued that previous assemblies, driven by partisan calculations, refused to close known vulnerabilities in election laws—vulnerabilities that were later exploited against them when they fell out of favour with governors and party bosses.
“Those lawmakers who declined to fix documented rigging mechanisms became victims of the very defects they left unaddressed,” he noted. “Denied party tickets and lacking protection against result manipulation, even popular incumbents found themselves unable to translate grassroots support into electoral victory.”
The legal practitioner warned that the current 10th Assembly appears headed down the same path by introducing conditions that could undermine direct electronic transmission of results from polling units to INEC’s Result Viewing Portal (IReV).
Striking Turnover Figures
Supporting his argument with data spanning 2007 to 2023, Igini highlighted consistently high turnover rates in both legislative chambers.
The Senate has experienced particularly dramatic instability. The 6th Senate (2007-2011) saw 79 per cent turnover, with only 23 of 109 members returning. While subsequent sessions showed some improvement—dropping to 67, 64, and 59 per cent respectively—the current 10th Senate has regressed sharply to 77 per cent turnover, with just 25 returning senators.
The House of Representatives follows a similar pattern, starting at 78 per cent turnover in its 6th session and declining to 57 per cent by the 9th. However, the 10th House has climbed back to 70 per cent, with only 109 of 360 members retaining their seats.
“This chronic instability, averaging 60-70 per cent attrition, creates institutional amnesia, wastes resources on constant retraining, undermines oversight capacity, and erodes continuity in governance,” Igini stated.
Igini emphasized that real-time transmission from polling units directly to IReV serves a critical purpose: preventing alteration of results at collation centres.
“Nigerians consistently demand this safeguard because publicly viewable results from polling units make tampering immediately visible and actionable,” he explained. “Without this protection, results can be manipulated between polling units and final collation—exactly what happens to legislators who lose party backing.”
The former REC dismissed concerns about inadequate network coverage as unfounded, pointing to data from before his 2022 departure showing over 97 per cent coverage of 2G and 3G networks across Nigeria.
“INEC successfully conducted electronic transmission in over 105 off-cycle elections, including five governorship polls, before 2023,” he noted. “The infrastructure exists and works.”
Igini cautioned that adding conditions to electronic transmission “opens the door to collusion between influential political actors, collation officials, and telecommunications providers to engineer convenient network failures on election day.”
He recalled that as far back as 2012 in Cross River State, INEC under Professor Attahiru Jega successfully piloted real-time transmission during Governor Liyel Imoke’s re-election, with results from all 18 local government areas transmitted and viewable on a central dashboard.
Persistent setbacks since then, he suggested, stem from deliberate obstruction rather than technical limitations, pointing to what he termed “statute capture” and courts’ puzzling reluctance to enforce existing electoral laws.
Under the 1999 Constitution, INEC possesses clear authority to regulate its own procedures and issue binding guidelines, Igini noted, questioning judicial decisions that have failed to uphold these powers.
The former commissioner urged lawmakers to remove the controversial proviso and restore unconditional requirements for direct, real-time electronic transmission as originally proposed.
He also appealed to the judiciary “not to make itself the weakest link in defending democracy and the rule of law.”
“The pattern is undeniable,” Igini concluded. “Let wisdom prevail over short-term political calculations and party loyalty, lest history repeat its harsh judgment on yet another Assembly. May we find the courage to do what serves our country’s best interests.”
The warning comes as pressure mounts on legislators to abandon conditions that could weaken electronic transmission requirements—a reform many Nigerians view as essential to electoral integrity.
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