FEMI ONAKANREN
The recent development stirring up the political space in Nigeria is the demand for real-time transmission of election results. Although the phrase is regularly mouthed with almost religious fervour, the advocates aren’t too clear on what they are demanding. Is it that every vote is counted and transmitted in real time, simultaneously/concurrently, or that the collated results at each polling unit are transmitted electronically?
The only scenario that satisfies the objectified ‘real-time’ definition is the first scenario. Any intermediate electronic transmission is not real-time and presents opportunities for different political shenanigans.
In the high-stakes arena of Nigerian elections, “real-time electronic transmission of results” has become a powerful political slogan to tantalize the uninformed and stimulate the herd. However, the gap between political rhetoric and technical reality is vast. While the clamour for instant data suggests a move toward transparency, a deeper look at Nigeria’s infrastructure —and the inherent vulnerabilities of digital systems— reveals that this “sophisticated” model may be a Trojan Horse for chaos.
Let’s have some reality checks.
The foundation of any real-time system is a stable power grid and a ubiquitous data network. The country has suffered multiple grid collapses in the first 2 months of 2026 and February is not over yet! The country’s power infrastructure has even recently been sabotaged by union workers. Is this the foundation to deploy this utopian adventure? Or are we to ignore the plethora of challenges that telecommunications companies and internet service providers face in ensuring seamless operations, which, more often than not, are barely passable? Who amongst the citizenry has not complained about network failure, disruption, denial, or delay?
In Nigeria, service providers like MTN and various DisCos operate in a landscape where 100% uptime is a myth. When telecommunications companies are asked to guarantee transmission success, their reluctance isn’t a lack of patriotism; it’s risk management.
In business, a 99.9% reliability rate is excellent. In an election, that missing 0.1%—the “fracture point”—represents thousands of disenfranchised votes and a potential constitutional and public crisis. If a network glitch occurs during transmission, does it invalidate the local count? The uncertainty alone is enough to set the stage for widespread unrest.
There is a dangerous misconception that “digital” automatically equals “secure.” In reality, real-time transmission can be easier and cheaper to sabotage than physical tallying. A targeted global sabotage attack, such as Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS), can cripple servers during the critical window when results are being uploaded. Unlike a text message or a social media post, where a 30-second delay is a minor annoyance, a delay in election data allows for a breach of the veracity of the ultimately announced results. Further, moving results electronically creates a single point of failure, a centralized vulnerability point. If the central database is compromised, the entire national result is cast into doubt.
The subsisting constitutionally backed framework, despite its flaws, relied on a collective policing framework. Agents from different parties watched the physical count, signed the results, were empowered to make copies of the signed election sheets, and were mandated to physically police the transition of the results/boxes.
The introduction of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) was a significant win because it addressed and mitigated a principal loophole of electoral fraud: unverified and illegitimate voters’ identity at the polling units. However, pushing for real-time transmission ignores the fact that we are still struggling with this simpler model. To jump to an even more complex, easily compromisable system is to ignore the lessons of history.
Curiously and alarmingly, many advocates of real-time transmission may not be seeking transparency, but rather this may be a “Trojan Horse” strategy. This mirrors the ill-fated “cashless policy” implementation of the recent past, a move that sabotaged the economy under the guise of progress, primarily because some felt it offered a tactical advantage over opponents, so they sacrificed the economy and everyone.
When the technical constraints are ignored for political optics and narratives, the service providers (the “middlemen”) become easy scapegoats. Accusations of complicity follow every network hiccup, and the credibility of the entire democratic process is shredded. The entire pursuit is a ridiculous application of the saw, “those who fail to plan, plan to fail”. In this instance, it appears those who fear they will fail are planning to ensure the compromised integrity and failure of the entire process.
To compound the issues, we have a population that struggles with the basic understanding of how iREV works or what it is constitutionally empowered to do. Politicians and their posse wove narratives to entice the imagination of the uninformed and/or biased. The same people who could not provide copies of Form EC8A to corroborate their claims of having won the election now seek to deputize the responsibility to digital gremlins.
If there is any need for concern, it should be how to plug the loopholes in the existing system and hold parties responsible for their actions and inactions. Any party or candidate that does not have verified, authorized representation at ALL the polling units should be automatically disqualified and all the votes voided as ineligible because of compliance failure. Every allegation of wrongdoing should be backed up with credible proof, or the people making the allegation will face legal prosecution. We should create and enforce responsible conduct of politicians, political parties, and their associates. This will help to bring some much-needed sanity to our electoral and democratic ecosystem.
There are a lot of small, incremental improvements to the existing system, which will not lead to an extreme overhaul of the current framework. The current framework is very expensive to operate, and another fallout the advocates of the real-time electronic transmission fail to communicate to their audience is the high recurrent cost of implementation and deployment of the proposed innovative technology adoption. For a people who daily lament about the cost of governance, advocating for increased expenditure on 3 tiers, across 36 states, every four years is just an absurd placement of priorities!
The pursuit of technology in elections should be incremental and grounded in reality. Real-time electronic transmission, while attractive on paper, fails to account for Nigeria’s unique infrastructure bottlenecks and the ease with which digital data can be manipulated. Until we can guarantee a 100% stable environment, the rush toward real-time transmission is less about progress and more about a dangerous lack of technical foresight.
– Femi Onakanren is a business, economics, and policy advisor. He writes from Lagos.