The 2023 presidential candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, has criticised the Senate for rejecting the mandatory real-time electronic transmission of election results, describing the decision as a deliberate assault on electoral transparency.
The rejected proposal was aimed at ensuring the electronic transmission of election results from polling units to the Independent National Electoral Commission’s Result Viewing Portal (IREV) after vote counting.
Reacting to the development on Thursday, Atiku stated that the ill-advised action represents a grave setback for electoral reform and a calculated blow against transparency, credibility, and public trust in Nigeria’s democratic process.
“At a time when democracies across the world are strengthening their electoral systems through technology, the Nigerian Senate has chosen to cling to opacity, protect loopholes, and preserve a system that has historically enabled manipulation, tampering, and post-election disputes,” he said.
He explained that real-time electronic transmission of results is not a partisan demand but a democratic safeguard, stressing that it reduces human interference, limits result manipulation, and ensures that the will of the voter, expressed at the polling unit, is faithfully reflected in the final outcome.
“To reject it, and adopt what is obviously a face-saving provision of the 2022 Act on electronic transmission of results is to signal an unwillingness to submit elections to public scrutiny,” the former Vice President decried. “This decision raises troubling questions about the commitment of the ruling political establishment to free, fair, and credible elections in 2027.”
Atiku noted that Nigerians cannot ignore the pattern in which every reform that strengthens transparency is resisted, while every ambiguity that benefits incumbency is preserved.
He emphasised that democracy must evolve with time, technology, and the legitimate expectations of the people, adding that elections must be decided by voters, not by manual delays, backroom alterations, procedural excuses, or even the courts.
The politician also expressed displeasure with the courts, accusing them of shamelessly upholding the mandate of the incumbent — and called on Nigerians, civil society organizations, the media, and the international community to take note of what he described as a regression in the country’s democratic process.
He further stated that Nigeria deserves elections that are transparent, verifiable, and beyond manipulation, asserting that anything less amounts to an injustice to the electorate and a betrayal of democracy.
