Direct primaries: Perfect chance for opposition to demonstrate real-time transmission of results
If the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the African Democratic Congress and other opposition political parties had their way, the entire document called the 2026 Electoral Reform would be rolled together
If the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the African Democratic Congress and other opposition political parties had their way, the entire document called the 2026 Electoral Reform would be rolled together and dumped in the trash can. This is in spite of the wide consultations and intense debates that preceded its passing before President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signed it into law.
In spite of the numerous public hearings within and outside the upper and lower chambers of the National Assembly, they are seeking a repeat of the entire process, not minding the time and billions in tax payers' money invested in the process. Now they are contesting many of the crucial clauses of the Act, with their representatives in the National Assembly acting as if they were under a spell or the sittings that culminated in the critical piece of legislation were held in the hours of the day preferred by witches.
The other day, Kenneth Okonkwo, the Nollywood actor turned politician, was on Arise Television, swearing by his grandmother's grave that, like the biblical enemy who planted weeds among the wheat while the farmer was asleep, the clauses of the legislation they are kicking against were all smuggled in by the APC lawmakers while the rest of them in opposition parties went into endless slumber like Alice in Wonderland.
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He was reacting to Arise News anchor Rufai Oseni, who, during the session, described the entire members of the opposition parties as a bunch of jokers for focusing all their attention and dissipating their energy on the agitation for the improbable real-time transmission of election results and ignoring other critical clauses like the mandatory digital membership register for parties and removal of indirect system of primary elections.
But rather than admit the collective incompetence of the opposition politicians who were busy treating ringworm while their leprosy festered, Okonkwo chose to blame everyone else, particularly the media for, according to him, failing to draw public attention to the lacunae in the new Act.
He said: "The journalists, who are actually supposed to be the watchdog, are operating in the realm of intellectual fraud, because you ought to be doing your investigative journalism, and you ought to be telling Nigerians what actually ought to be in the law.
“You were there when after they made a law, they went and forged in other things and brought it to Nigerians. Yet you are saying that the people that are confronting them are jokers. I am telling you, and I mean it sincerely, that the modern journalist has not lived up to the expectations of Nigerians.”
Now jolted from their slumber, the opposition parties are racing against time to comply with the mandatory digital membership register without which the law says they cannot present candidates for elections. But it is a matter of irony that that a group of people who blamed the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) lawmakers in the National Assembly for shutting down the agitation real-time transmission of election results and would not listen to wise counsel as to the dangers and limitations that inhere in it are finding it difficult to prevent the mess being made of their membership registration portal.
The portal hurriedly opened by ADC upon INEC's insistence that only party members on the digital register are qualified to contest elections has been the butt of cruel jokes from people who are out to prove that digital operation of electoral activities, especially in a somewhat backwards communication environment like ours, is highly premature and unrealizable.
Many of them have gone to the portal to register as ADC members using all manner of funny names including Donald Trump, Abubakar Shekau, Bello Turji, Didinrin Obidiot, and have all been granted membership without any form of verification. Yet the party that cannot manage a task as simple as online registration of members is at the vanguard of the agitation for real-time transmission of election results. Determined to discredit the outcome of the 2027 elections even before the commencement of the processes, they would have none of the wise counsel that real-time transmission is practically impossible in an election whose processes are predominantly manual.
By what magic would results be transmitted in real time when voters' accreditation is done manually, the votes are manually cast, the counting at the polling booth is done manually, and Form EC8A, the backbone of the electoral process, has to be filled manually? Yet they were so jaded by their mischievous demand for a standard of election not yet attained even by the US, the UK, France, Germany, and other world's advanced democracies that they overlooked other critical provisions of the 2026 Electoral Act they must fulfill as political parties to be eligible for participation in the 2027 elections, namely compulsory digital membership register and exclusion of indirect primaries as a means of picking candidates for elective positions.
But the cloud of controversy surrounding the 2026 Electoral Act has behind it a silver lining the opposition parties can now explore. They must seize the opportunity provided by the direct primaries option to prove that real-time transmission of election results is possible. This they can do by transmitting the results of their direct primary elections electronically and in real time. INEC, the much vilified electoral umpire, can then pick it up from there.
