The national debate over the Electoral Act 2026, recently signed into law, continued on Sunday, with Nigerians expressing divergent views over the new legislation that will serve as a legal guide for the conduct of the 2027 general elections.
The issues identified in the new law took centre stage during a Citizens’ Townhall, an event broadcast live on Channels Television.
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The programme, themed “Electoral Act 2026: What it means for your vote and the 2027 elections?”, provided a platform for Nigerians to ask critical questions about the thorny issues in the new Act, including the contentious debate over electronic result transmission.
The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Joash Amupitan, used the forum to address the technical concerns facing the Commission.
Identifying network inadequacy as a primary challenge, he emphasised that the quality of an election is inherently linked to logistical capacity.
“I don’t see the issue of transmission as a problem; the problem is not the network but the adequacy of the networks we have,” he said.
While acknowledging that Nigeria might not achieve “100 per cent perfect elections for now,” Amupitan assured the public that the Commission is striving to deliver the best possible outcome.
He further declared that technical glitches would not derail the 2027 polls.
“The glitch is eliminated; by God’s grace, it will not surface in Nigeria,” he added.
To bolster this confidence, he disclosed that INEC would conduct a mock presidential election to stress-test the transmission architecture.
“One of the things we are trying to do before the election is to have a mock presidential election so that we are sure that this transmission across the states must not fail,” Amupitan added.
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However, the Executive Director of Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo, remained critical of the National Assembly’s decision to make manual transmission an option.
He argued that electronic transmission must be the sole, real-time method for results to ensure credibility.
Itodo further warned that the recently announced compressed election timetable places immense pressure on the Commission.
