Electronic transmission will not fix Nigeria’s elections
Sir: Across Nigeria today, few political ideas command as much agreement as the demand for real-time electronic transmission of election results. To many citizens, it has become the defining reform,
- By Nosa Osaikhuiwu
Sir: Across Nigeria today, few political ideas command as much agreement as the demand for real-time electronic transmission of election results. To many citizens, it has become the defining reform, the one change that will finally deliver free and credible elections.
The reasoning is understandable. A large number of Nigerians believe election outcomes are manipulated and therefore do not reflect the will of voters. The consequence has been predictable: voter apathy. Millions no longer participate because they assume the result has already been decided before the first ballot is cast.
Electronic transmission is therefore presented as the cure. It is not. Elections are not only technical exercises. They are moral exercises. Nigeria’s electoral crisis is fundamentally moral, not technological. Thus, mandating and implementing real-time electronic transmission of election results may give a false sense of confidence, but the underlying issues will remain and resurface once the results are declared, followed by rejections of the results by losing candidates and political parties.
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The demand for electronic transmission addresses suspicion, not its cause. Nigeria’s problem is not merely how results travel from polling units to collation centres. The problem is the ethical environment within which those processes occur. Technology does not replace human intention; it processes it.
The same society that manipulates manual systems will attempt to manipulate electronic ones. The programmers, operators, supervisors, party agents, security personnel, and judicial reviewers will still be Nigerians shaped by the same political culture. In computing, there is a simple rule: garbage in, garbage out.
Electronic devices can be pre-configured. Software can be compromised. Systems can be accessed internally before transmission or attacked externally once connected to networks.
Even where audit trails exist, they depend on the integrity of custodians. Countries with stronger institutions than ours still retain paper verification mechanisms precisely because technology alone cannot generate trust. Nigeria hopes technology will replace trust. It cannot.
Many Nigerians assume that once results are transmitted electronically, disputes will disappear. The opposite is more likely. Today, the allegation is that the results were altered during collation. Tomorrow, it will be: servers were hacked. The accusation merely evolves with the technology.
The real issue is psychological, a deep national inability to accept electoral defeat. Since independence, losing parties have routinely alleged rigging, regardless of the margin or circumstances. Supporters approach elections believing victory is guaranteed; therefore, defeat must be illegitimate. No voting architecture can function where participants reject the possibility of losing. Democracy requires a difficult civic virtue: acceptance of unfavourable outcomes. Without that virtue, every system fails, manual or electronic.
Nigeria consistently seeks mechanical solutions to behavioural problems. We reorganize procedures but ignore values. We redesign institutions but avoid reforming citizens. Yet leaders do not emerge from a vacuum. Political behaviour reflects social behaviour. A society that tolerates everyday dishonesty cannot expect political sanctity during elections.
If corruption is normal in daily life, in business, education, employment, and public service, elections cannot be magically exempt from it for one day every four years. Electronic transmission may improve administration. It cannot manufacture integrity.
Supporters of electronic transmission argue that even if imperfect, it will at least inspire confidence. Perhaps, initially, when the results are announced, reality will set in. But confidence built on a device rather than on shared civic ethics is fragile. The first disputed outcome will return the country to familiar accusations, protests, and court battles.
Technology can verify numbers. It cannot persuade people determined not to believe them. The demand for electronic transmission risks becoming another national illusion, like many reforms before it, where expectations exceed human readiness.
Nigeria needs electoral reform, but not only electoral reform. It needs ethical reform. Until the society prizes integrity over cleverness, responsibility over blame, and service over entitlement, every institutional improvement will produce only temporary relief. A corrupt environment adapts faster than any rulebook.
This is why each reform cycle produces the same disappointment: new laws, new procedures, new equipment, yet the same distrust. We are attempting to repair democracy from the outside, even though the failure begins from within.
Real-time electronic transmission of results is useful and should be implemented. It may improve logistics and speed up reporting. But it will not end electoral disputes. It will not eliminate allegations of manipulation. And it will not automatically produce credible elections.
Because Nigeria’s democratic crisis does not originate in ballot handling, it originates in civic culture. We are trying to digitize a moral problem. Until Nigerians confront the ethical foundations of public life, honesty, accountability, and acceptance of legitimate defeat, every reform will eventually disappoint, and every election will remain contested.
•Nosa Osaikhuiwu,
Houston, Texas, United States of America.
