“Until that truth is faced head on, the snake in the room will keep slithering through every election cycle, unseen by some, ignored by others, but felt by everyone”.
BY UCHE ANYANWU
The Nigerian Senate may have amended Clause 60 of the Electoral Act, but let’s not pretend the country has crossed some democratic Rubicon. Yes, presiding officers are now required to transmit results electronically to the IReV portal. Yes, this sounds like progress. But tucked neatly into the amendment, like a serpent coiled under the table, is the line that truly matters: if electronic transmission fails, officials will fall back on the manual result sheet, Form EC8A.
This is not a footnote. It is the entire story.
For all the speeches about modernization, the Senate has effectively reaffirmed the supremacy of manual collation, the very stage of the process where credibility has historically gone to die. It is the place where numbers mysteriously “adjust,” where figures travel without witnesses, where the will of voters becomes vulnerable to the will of whoever controls the paperwork.
And now, with one sentence, that old machinery has been given fresh oxygen.
Manual collation is not a harmless backup. It is the most contested, litigated, and distrusted part of Nigeria’s electoral architecture. It is the reason tribunals overflow. It is the reason citizens refresh the IReV portal with anxiety. It is the reason every election night feels like a national stress test.
So, when lawmakers say electronic transmission is the default but manual collation is the fallback, Nigerians hear something else entirely, the fallback is still the real power center.
The amendment hinges on a phrase that should alarm anyone who cares about credible elections: if electronic transmission fails. That phrase is a blank cheque. Who decides failure? How long must officials try? What evidence must they provide? Without strict, enforceable standards, “failure” becomes a magic word, one that can be invoked at will.
And once it is invoked, the process slides back into the shadows of Form EC8A, where transparency becomes optional and trust becomes negotiable.
Let’s be blunt, a system that keeps manual collation as the ultimate arbiter is not a system ready for the future. It is a system protecting its past. The Senate may have updated the law, but it did not update the culture of electoral accountability. Instead, it preserved the very mechanism that has repeatedly undermined public confidence.
This is not caution. It is compromise.
A credible election cannot run on two parallel tracks, one transparent, one opaque, and expect citizens to simply trust that both will lead to the same destination. If electronic transmission is truly the backbone of transparency, then the fallback must be tightly regulated, independently verified, and used only under conditions that are publicly documented and indisputable.
Anything less is an invitation to suspicion.
The Real Snake Isn’t the Clause, It’s the Comfort With Ambiguity
The danger is not that manual collation exists. The danger is that it continues to exist without guardrails, without scrutiny, and without the political will to limit its influence. The Senate may have passed an amendment, but it has not confronted the deeper issue: Nigeria cannot build a modern democracy on a foundation that still relies on handwritten sheets traveling through opaque channels.
Until that truth is faced head on, the snake in the room will keep slithering through every election cycle, unseen by some, ignored by others, but felt by everyone.
And no amount of legislative polish can hide it.
…Uche Anyanwu is a Lawyer and a public affairs analyst
