Ahead of the 2027 general elections, the National Assembly has been urged to expedite actions on electoral reforms, address the integrity crises rocking election conducting body, and implement the Justice Mohammed Uwais report.
The call was made on Wednesday in Abuja during an anti-corruption radio program, PUBLIC CONSCIENCE, produced by the Progressive Impact Organization for Community Development, PRIMORG.
This development follows a recent investigative report published by the Center for Collaborative Investigative Journalism (CCIJ), which exposed how thousands of altered voting tallies and mutilated figures were successfully uploaded to the result portal of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) during the 2023 presidential elections in Nigeria.
Speaking during the programme, the Executive Director of Alliance for Inclusive Development—AidAfrica, James Ugochukwu, called on the members of the National Assembly to ensure electoral reform processes are concluded before the end of 2025 to give room for adoption and test runs before the next general elections.
Ugochukwu advised that all the reforms the legislators look forward to are contained in Justice Uwais’s report on electoral reform and other previous national conferences, warning that between now and June 2025 is the best period for electoral reforms rather than close to the 2027 elections.
He called for the rejigging and reorganizing of INEC as part of the reforms, and a review of the technological failures of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the Result Viewing Portal (IREV) experienced during the last presidential election. He added that the IREV should be part of the Electoral Act and upgraded to reject mutilated and blurry electoral documents uploaded in the 2023 general and subsequent off-cycle polls.
“About the snail pace of the electoral reform process by the National Assembly, there is nothing we want in the Electoral Act that has not been proffered by Justice Uwais’s report or the National CONFAB, so we should stop wasting taxpayers’ money trying to do any electoral reform process in the National Assembly.
“What should be done is to converge all stakeholders, Nigeria Bar Association, Nigeria Union of Journalists, the Civil Society, the election management body, and security agencies in a conference.
“Electoral reform should be quick, and we should be able to have a new Electoral Act, give or take the middle of this year ahead of 2027 – because a lot of things need to be done well. For instance, now INEC should be able to decide if the IREV portal will just be a result viewing portal or a result collation portal recognized by the law.
Ugochukwu lauded PRIMORG for organizing the radio programme and sustaining the pressure on the government and federal legislators to prioritize electoral integrity and reforms.
For his part, the Africa Editor, CCIJ, Ajibola Amzat, backed the call for electoral reforms and the implementation of the Uwais Commission report ahead of future elections and 2027 polls, adding that reform should be used to strike out the president’s prerogative to appoint the chairman of INEC as he could be a beneficiary of the same system.
Amzat stressed that the integrity crisis in Nigeria’s elections is caused by the failure to punish electoral offenses over the years and worsening weak institutions.
Reflecting on the CCIJ’s report on the irregularities allegedly undermining the 2023 presidential poll, He disclosed that INEC violated legal and constitutional instruments guiding elections.
Additionally, Amzat revealed that the electoral body was unable to answer questions about altered figures and blurry documents submitted on IREV and claimed that IREV is currently inaccessible to the general public.
“I’m in support of reforms. Interestingly, Nigeria has one of the finest laws guiding elections; it is just that the laws are paper tigers. They are good on paper but not good on enforcement.
“I agree that the appointment of the INEC Chair should not be the decision of the president, who is also likely to be a beneficiary of the election.
“The INEC needs to know that the law is not for decorations; instead, it has to be enforced. How many people have been prosecuted for the crimes committed in the last elections?
“The constitution, the electoral law, the INEC guidelines, the international protocols, each of these legal instruments were violated during the last general elections, and counting votes during the elections. From our (CCIJ) checks, we found a lot of irregularities during the 2023 presidential poll,” Amzat lamented.
On deepening the use of technology in Nigeria’s elections, he said, “I think technology is still going to play a part in every key development, so I think we need to make technology work for us. You know technology can be a good tool and a weapon as well, a weapon against the integrity of the people, so it depends on how you use technology.”
Public Conscience is a syndicated weekly anti-corruption radio program, PRIMORG, that draws the attention of the government and citizens to corruption and integrity issues in Nigeria.
The program runs in partnership with the MacArthur Foundation.