By Ebuka Ukoh
Nigeria is once again arguing about whether election results should be transmitted electronically from polling units in real time.
At first glance, this sounds technical. Network strength. Server capacity. Connectivity gaps. Legal wording. Beneath the technical vocabulary lie deeper questions: Do we want elections whose outcomes are traceable, verifiable, and difficult to manipulate? Or do we want elections that still leave room for “adjustments” between the polling units and the final collation centres?
Recent comments by a former Resident Electoral Commissioner, Barr Mike Igini, have brought this issue back into sharp focus. His warning is not about gadgets. It is about credibility. He argues that weakening mandatory electronic transmission risks eroding public trust ahead of 2027.
This is not a minor legislative tweak. It is about whether Nigeria moves forward or backwards in electoral transparency.
I do not claim expertise in electoral technology. I am neither an engineer nor an INEC official. I occupy the office of a citizen … concerned enough to invite us to reason together.
When the rules governing the transfer of power become unclear, everyone should pay attention. If anyone believes this conversation is exaggerated or premature, they only need to revisit the theatrics that unfolded during the recent elections in Abuja. Confusion, accusations, narrative battles, and public distrust filled the air long before final declarations were settled. That alone shows this is not a technical footnote. It is a stability question.
Electoral credibility is not a cosmetic issue. It belongs in the national security infrastructure. When citizens believe their votes count, they invest in ballots. When they believe outcomes are negotiable, frustration seeks other channels. No country can sustainably police its way out of democratic distrust. The cheapest form of stability is credible elections.
What e-transmission means
Many Nigerians hear “e-transmission” and imagine fully automated polls. That is not the case. Voting remains manual. Ballots are counted manually at the polling units. Party agents and observers are present. The result is entered on Form EC8A and jointly signed by all of those concerned.
The difference comes after counting. Under real-time electronic transmission, the presiding officer uploads a photograph or scanned copy of the polling unit result directly to INEC’s central server and the public viewing portal. That means the result becomes visible almost immediately.
Why does this matter?
Historically, the greatest and most recurring vulnerabilities in Nigerian elections have little to do with the polling units. It’s more to do with the collations. When results move physically (offline) from polling units to the wards, to the local governments and to the states, they pass through multiple hands. Each stage creates opportunities … and opportunities in a weak system invite unwholesome interferences.
Electronic transmission reduces that ugly window, creating a digital timestamp, a public record, and a trail. That is not perfection, but it is protection.
Real fear behind e-transmission resistance
The argument against mandatory e-transmission usually rests on infrastructure concerns, such as poor network coverage, power outages, and rural connectivity. Legitimate as they are, these concerns must be tested against evidence. After all, Nigeria conducts electronic banking across remote communities, SIM registration is centralised, BVN verification works nationwide, telecommunications companies operate 3G and 4G networks covering most populated areas, and INEC uploads voter registration data and has tested electronic transmission before. If we can electronically verify bank transfers in real time, why can’t we transmit a polling unit result sheet? The deeper concern may not be connectivity, but control. Manual collation allows discretion. Discretion allows negotiation. Negotiation allows influence. Technology narrows discretion. And systems built on discretionary power rarely surrender it willingly.
What is ahead if e-transmission dust doesn’t settle?
If the legal framework remains ambiguous going into 2027, several consequences are predictable:
Voter turnout rate will drop further. Litigations will multiply. Every disputed election will centre on whether electronic transmission was required or optional. Public trust will decline further. Citizens already sceptical of outcomes will interpret delays or technical failures as manipulation.
Post-election unrest may intensify. Where transparency is weak, conspiracy fills the vacuum.
International credibility will decline. Electoral observers evaluate transparency architecture, not speeches. Nigeria cannot afford another credibility crisis in 2027.
Governance gap
This e-transmission controversy exposes something larger than election procedure. It reveals how reform is often negotiated in fragments rather than explained in full. The public watched as tensions flared within both chambers of the national parliament over electronic transmission, with amendments proposed, resisted, reframed, and debated in ways that appeared more political than technical. The optics were troubling. When lawmakers publicly clash over transparency mechanisms without clearly communicating the evidence behind their positions, citizens are left to interpret motive rather than substance.
Democratic reform must not feel improvised or strategic. It must be evidence-driven and transparent. If parliamentarians believe electronic transmission is impractical, they must publish the data supporting that claim. If INEC believes it is feasible, it must present detailed technical assessments and infrastructure mapping. Democracy does not run on assumptions. It runs on clarity.
Actionable recommendations
If Nigeria is serious about credible elections, the following steps are urgent:
1. Make Real-Time E-Transmission the Legal Default
The Electoral Act should stipulate that electronic transmission from polling units is mandatory, not conditional. Where connectivity fails, the presiding officer should be required to post and/or move to the nearest viable transmission point within a defined time window. Ambiguity is the enemy of credibility.
2. Publish a National Connectivity Audit for Elections
INEC, with the Nigerian Communications Commission and mobile network operators, should release a publicly accessible map showing transmission readiness by polling unit cluster. Transparency builds confidence.
3. Build Redundancy Systems
Where network gaps exist, satellite uplink devices or portable signal boosters can be deployed. Other developing democracies use layered redundancy to protect election data.
Failure planning is part of system design, after all.
4. Conduct Nationwide Public Education
Citizens must understand how results move from the polling unit to the final declaration. The more voters understand the chain, the harder it becomes to manipulate it quietly. Democracy requires informed participants.
5. Establish Criminal Penalties for Deliberate Non-Transmission
If a presiding officer fails to upload without a documented technical reason, clear sanctions must follow. Rules without enforcement are decorative.
Bigger question
Nigeria’s democratic future will not be determined only by who wins the polls. It will be determined by whether citizens believe those wins are legitimate. Technology is not magic. It cannot repair weak institutions or substitute for political will. But it can narrow the space for abuse. And in fragile democracies, narrowing that space is meaningful progress.
Nigeria is not technologically barren. According to data from the Nigerian Communications Commission, the country has over 200 million active mobile subscriptions, with penetration extending deep into rural communities. Millions of Nigerians in villages conduct mobile transfers, receive alerts, use USSD codes, and verify identities electronically. Market women process digital payments. Farmers check prices on basic phones. Technology already mediates daily economic life far beyond major cities.
The question before us, then, is not whether electronic transmission is perfect. It is whether we are prepared to apply the same digital confidence we rely on in banking and commerce to the protection of our votes.
When results are clear at the source, they do not need to be defended later. When votes are protected at the polling units
democracy becomes harder to manipulate.
If we get this wrong now, 2027 will not revolve around campaigns. It will revolve around credibility. And credibility, once lost, is far more expensive to rebuild than any server infrastructure.
Mr Ukoh, an alumnus of the American University of Nigeria, Yola, and PhD student at Columbia University, writes from New York.
OP-ED ARTICLE FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Jesse Jackson and the Architecture of Hope: Why Nigeria Needs Movements, Not Moments
By Ebuka Ukoh
If Nigeria is serious about reform, it must study not only who the late Right Reverend Jesse Jackson was, but also how he operated. He did not merely protest injustice; he built lasting institutions to sustain his quest for justice.
Born in 1941, Jackson emerged from the civil rights movement under the leadership of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. He marched in Selma. He organised in Chicago. He founded Operation PUSH and later the Rainbow Coalition. In 1984 and 1988, he ran for President of the United States, becoming the first African American to mount a serious national campaign and win millions of votes across racial lines.
He did not win the presidency. But he definitely expanded the imagination of who could lead. And sometimes that is how structural change begins.
Jackson understood something that Nigeria is still struggling to internalise. Protest without structure is noisemaking. Structure without moral vision is empty. A nation requires both structure and vision.
Architecture of Moral Language
Jackson brought moral language into the centre of political discourse. He spoke of dignity, economic justice, inclusion, and accountability. He challenged corporate America and government policy with the vocabulary of conscience.
Nigeria is deeply religious. Churches and mosques overflow. Sermons are powerful. Yet our politics often lacks moral restraint. We speak the language of faith but operate the mechanics of patronage. We invoke God but rarely demand ethical clarity from those in office.
Jackson’s example forces a question. What would Nigerian politics look like if leaders were pressed not only on strategy and tribe but on justice and responsibility? What if we evaluated leadership not just by who benefits, but by who is protected?
Coalitions Across Difference
Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition was not a slogan. It was a deliberate attempt to unite Black Americans, Latinos, labour unions, farmers, and low-income communities under a shared platform of economic and social justice. It required negotiation. It required compromise. It required maturity.
Nigeria is a federation of identities – ethnic, religious, and regional. Yet our coalitions are often temporary arrangements built for elections, not for transformation. They dissolve after victory. They fracture under pressure. We have ethnic champions. We have party loyalists and chieftains. We have influencers…but we lack bridge builders who can gather citizens around shared interests rather than shared enemies.
Jackson’s campaigns proved that diversity is not a weakness. It becomes a weakness only when leaders exploit it instead of organising it. Jackson understood something many movements forget: protest is emotional energy, but institutions are stored power.
Nigeria has seen this before. The resistance that followed the annulment of the June 12, 1993, election did not survive on outrage alone. It survived because labour unions, pro-democracy coalitions, student movements, journalists, religious leaders, and civil society groups worked in uneasy alignment. The pro-democracy movement of the 1990s was not a hashtag. It was infrastructure. It was a coalition. It was architecture. Without that web of organised actors, military rule might have endured longer.
Even the fuel subsidy protests years later revealed the same pattern. When labour federations coordinated action, the nation listened. When the organisation fractured, momentum faded. History keeps teaching the same lesson. Energy without structure exhausts itself. That is the lesson Nigeria must not ignore.
From Protest to Policy
The civil rights movement did not end with marches. It produced legislation. The Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Voting Rights Act of 1965. Structural outcomes followed sustained pressure.
Nigeria trends outrage quickly, hashtags rise, emotions flare. Then the moment fades. What often does not follow is institutional design, policy literacy, electoral strategy, budget scrutiny, and local organising.
Jackson moved from the streets to the ballot. He did not see activism and governance as enemies. He saw them as stages of the same struggle. Nigeria does not need fewer passionate voices. It needs more disciplined movements. It needs citizens who understand that democracy is not event-based. It is process-based.
What made Jesse Jackson’s life particularly instructive was not merely his charisma. It was the ecosystem that produced him.
He emerged from a dense network of Black institutions in America that did not operate in isolation. The African Methodist Episcopal Church laid spiritual and organisational foundations. Prince Hall Freemasons built mutual aid networks and leadership pipelines. Historically Black Colleges and Universities trained generations of professionals. The Divine Nine fraternities and sororities cultivated bonds of service and activism. The NAACP reshaped legal strategy. The Urban League advanced economic mobility.
These were not parallel stories. They were interdependent systems. Leadership moved between them. Resources circulated among them. Victories in one strengthened the others. Remove one pillar, and the structure weakens. This is precisely the argument of our joint bookwork, Built By The Ancestors. Most historical accounts treat such institutions as separate chapters. They are not. They are ecosystems. The durability of a people rests not on one hero but on coordinated pillars of faith, education, economics, law, and civic action.
Jackson was not an accident. He was the architecture itself. Nigeria must ask itself an uncomfortable question: Where is our architecture?
Economic Justice as Stability
Jackson consistently linked race and poverty to economic exclusion. He argued that political rights without economic access produce fragile democracies.
Nigeria is learning that lesson the hard way. Youth unemployment, insecurity, inflation, and regional instability are not isolated crises. They are symptoms of exclusion. When large segments of the population feel economically locked out, frustration becomes combustible. Economic justice is not charity. It is national security.
Hope as Strategy
Perhaps Jackson’s most enduring contribution was not a policy but a posture. He believed in what he called the “architecture of hope.” Not optimism detached from reality. Not a denial of hardship. But structured belief that systems can be changed when people organise deliberately.
Nigeria often oscillates between two extremes: Cynicism and magical thinking. Either nothing will ever change, or change will come through a single election or saviour.
History suggests something different. Change requires sustained effort. It requires a coalition. It requires moral clarity paired with institutional work.
Movements, Not Moments
Jesse Jackson’s presidential campaigns did not end racism. But they shifted representation. They expanded political possibilities. They prepared the ground for future breakthroughs.
Nigeria must learn this lesson. Not every attempt at reform will succeed immediately. Not every campaign will win. But disciplined participation builds capacity. Capacity builds influence, and Influence builds reform.
We cannot afford to be a country of moments only. Moments trend, but movements transform.
If Nigeria desires a different future, it must cultivate leaders who can speak with moral courage and organise with strategic patience. It must nurture citizens who understand that democracy demands more than applause or outrage. It demands structure.
Before we ask why the system does not work, we must ask whether we are building systems strong enough to hold our hopes.
Jackson’s life offers Nigeria a mirror. A nation does not change because it feels injustice. It changes because it organises against it. And that work begins long before the next election cycle. We have voices. We have anger. We have talent. What we have not consistently built is a system strong enough to outlive any one leader.
Jackson’s life reminds us that movements mature when they become institutions. And institutions endure when they are interdependent.
Before we ask whether Nigeria will produce another charismatic reformer, we must ask whether Nigeria is building the pillars that can sustain one. Nations do not rise on moments. They rise on structures. And without structure, even the loudest cry fades into silence.
Mr Ukoh, an alumnus of the American University of Nigeria, Yola, and PhD student at Columbia University, writes from New York.
