By Ademu Idakwo, Olakunle Olasanmi, Abuja, Olamide Ojuokaiye, Abiodun Sivowaku, Lagos
Expectedly, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has reaffirmed its exclusive statutory authority to collate and announce election results in Nigeria, amid fresh moves by opposition political forces to independently track, transmit and collate results from polling units during the 2027 general elections.
Obi Proposes Dual Results Transmission
INEC’s position came against the backdrop of a proposal by the presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Peter Obi, to establish an independent system through which his campaign organisation would transmit election results from polling units to its own situation room alongside the official transmission to the commission.
Obi’s plan has also drawn the support of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), which said it was equally building its own capacity to collate results rather than relying solely on the commission for the collation of figures generated at polling units.
Obi, in an interview with Arise TV on Thursday, said his team would deploy a system capable of receiving and monitoring results from polling units as they are recorded during the 2027 election.
He said the system would operate alongside INEC’s official transmission platform, explaining that the objective was to ensure that results declared at the end of the process could be traced to what was recorded at the polling units.
“We must make sure that at every polling unit, the votes are counted, the votes are recorded properly, the votes are transmitted properly,” Obi said.
He explained that his team would have what he described as a “dual transmission” system, with results transmitted to the designated INEC portal as well as to its own situation room.
The former Anambra State governor said the arrangement should not be regarded as the establishment of a parallel result-transmission system, arguing that it was intended to provide an additional means of monitoring the integrity of results from polling units.
Obi’s move reflects a longstanding mistrust of INEC’s processes following the hotly disputed 2023 presidential election during which INEC reported that its results viewing portal, IReV, suffered a glitch that affected only presidential election results, leaving the three main candidates, Obi, Atiku Abubakar and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu claiming victory.
INEC declared Tinubu winner and the courts affirmed his victory, but Obi and his supporters have continued to claim he won at the polls but was denied victory.
ADC Backs Independent Monitoring
Meanwhile, the ADC similarly said it would not depend entirely on INEC for the collation of its own results during the 2027 elections.
The national publicity secretary of the party, Bolaji Abdullahi, said the party was developing its own capacity to collate results as part of efforts to independently monitor the electoral process.
When the question was posed to him, Abdullahi said, “Absolutely. We are also saying that we will not trust the collation of results to INEC. We are also building the capacity to collate our results.”
The development signals a growing emphasis among opposition parties on independent monitoring of election results ahead of the 2027 presidential election, particularly following continuing concerns over the transparency and credibility of the electoral process.
