• ‘Parties Should Appoint Educated People As Agents’

Monday Ubani is a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and the chairman, Electoral Reform Committee of the Nigerian Bar Association (NBA). In this interview, he speaks on the controversy over the Electoral Act amendment Bill and what is expected from the harmonisation committee of the National Assembly, among other issues, ANAYO EZUGWU report

What is your perspective on the Electoral Act amendment Bill and are you satisfied with the conditional passage the Senate gave to the bill?

You will recall that I recently assured Nigerians that the Senate will pass their own version of the bill, and that if there are differences, there will be a harmonisation committee, which is what I call a conference committee, in order to look at those differences and come up with a harmonised version for transmission to the President for assent.

I’m happy that the House of Representatives did theirs last year, and then the Senate have actually also passed their own version, and there are differences. So, the committee will sit in order to harmonise that position. Now, a bit of history is also very critical to really understand where we are and where we’re headed.

The position of the law, which is the 2022 Act, is that it gave the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) the responsibility of issuing out a guideline or prescribing a guideline as to the mode of transfer, because our problem with our electoral system has always been between the polling unit and the collation centre. People have witnessed a situation where results declared at the collation centre would be different from what happened at the polling unit. So, it used to be issue of ballot slashing.

The issue of this manipulation of electoral result became a very troubling situation that made the 9th National Assembly to consider issue of transmission. But remember that they stepped it down because of argument over network failure and all that. So, the Act itself, section 60 (sub-section 5) gave INEC the discretionary power to prescribe the modality for transfer of results from the polling unit to the collation centre.

And so in its wisdom, INEC in 2023 prescribed a guideline that says we are for real transmission of result. And to be fair to the commission, they used that transmission of result electronically during the senatorial and House of Representatives elections. But where there was issue was during the presidential election. They said there was a glitch, and it became a matter for adjudication in the court. The court now was asked to invalidate the presidential election because INEC did not comply with its guideline that says electronic transmission was supposed to be what they should have used.

We use technology to avoid manipulation of human beings, whereas in other countries, they use technology to enhance efficiency because naturally, they are patriotic to their nations

The court looked at the legal framework and discovered that there was no provision for the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IREV) and that there was no provision for electronic transmission of results being mandatory in the legal framework, and said that there’s no way they could invalidate that result because of the fact that there was no statutory backing.

That was why in 2025, the members of the House and Senate now came together and said: How do we address this issue because the court has actually discovered a gap in the law that we enacted in 2022? What do we do in order to fill the gap? That is the process that we’re undergoing presently. The version of amendment bill passed by the House of Representatives shows that they agreed with the issue of mandatory transmission.

The House of Representatives agreed with the issue of mentioning specifically IREV in the law. The House of Representatives also agreed that it is going to be real-time, meaning that immediately the result is announced at the polling unit, will be transmitted in the presence of all the polling unit agents and all the people that came to vote. That is real-time. Now, when it came to the Senate, the Senate initially said, look, let’s agree with the 2022 Act.

There’s nothing to change the issue of transfer and all that. Nigerians protested and said, no, what we need is that there must be electronic transmission, and it must be real-time. The senators called for an emergency sitting and amended the initial bill hat they passed, saying, we agree with Nigerians on the issue of mandatory transmission but what we are saying is that in case transmission is not feasible because of some problems that may occur in the process, we will allow the physical form EC8A to be used at the collation centre, and it will form the primary source of information for collation.

In other words, they are envisaging some technical issues that may likely arise. They don’t want a situation where what happened in 2023 will affect them, because most of them that are there are actually products or beneficiaries of electronic transmission results. But in the presidential election, remember that INEC said there was a glitch.

But because they don’t want a situation where a possibility of glitch will now be a problem for the elections of 2027, they now said in case there is no issue of transmission due to communication failure, that’s how they use it then we have to have a result to issue of the manual result for purposes of coalition. But mind you, both electronic transmission that everyone is clamouring for and the manual, it is still manual collation that is in our law. Nothing has changed. The only thing that has happened with issue of electronic transmission is that you will view it is only for purposes of viewing. That’s why they call it a viewing portal. It does not in any way calculate.

It does not in any way tabulate result. The result has to be tabulated at the collation centre by the collation officers in the presence of collation agents and other stakeholders. That is the thing that we are in now. So, the issue that people are having with the version that was passed by the Senate is an issue of communication failure.

How do you define what amounts to communication failure? Who determines it? Would there be an independent assessor because a very bad person can come up with the claim of communication failure and then resort to manual collation, and at the end, we have nothing transmitted, and you have problem at the collation centre where there is any manipulation.

That is where the problem is. But as I speak, I’ve been able to break these things down. My purpose is to tell Nigerians what the position of the law may likely be and what we should do in order to guide against manipulation during the 2027 general election, and I hope I’ve been able to communicate.

Some lawmakers have argued that there is no difference between the version of section 63 that the amendment of the House of Representatives passed and the section 63 amendment that the Senate passed. Can you tease out some of the key differences legally, particularly when it comes to this idea of real-time transmission?

Look at what the House of Representatives passed. They agreed that it is going to be electronic transmission, real-time. Now, what people are interpreting that real-time to mean is that it will be done simultaneously. That is, immediately you announce the result. The next act that it should do is to upload that form. The result is not transmitted in the sense of probably the figures. It is the form you upload. The word used by House of Representatives is real-time.

In the case of the Senate, the lawmakers said you transmit when the presiding officer and the person contesting the election or his agent have signed. It did not say when that transmission will take place. So, it gives room for people now to speculate because they didn’t use the word real-time. Some people see it that it maybe be two or three days later or three hours later that the presiding officer will upload. That is the difference.

We must make sure that we have people who are educated enough at the collation centre to help the political parties to achieve the aim of what Nigerians have actually expressed by voting

People are saying they should have used the word real-time. But if you look at that particular version they have passed, they said that transmission will be done after the presiding officer and the agents have signed. I don’t see any difference except the fact that a very bad presiding officer may not want to transmit immediately because of the fact that real-time is not used. That is where the harmonization committee now comes in.

The question members of the committee will ask is: Gentlemen, what position are we going to take? They will further ask: Because we don’t want to leave room for litigation and creating ambiguity for the court and then leave the court again to be given different interpretations, can we use the word that it must be done immediately after the results have been announced and signed?

Why do we have to wait, you know, to do it either two hours or one week later? So, let’s put the word immediately that result has been announced. The next thing is to transmit it. So, that is the only difference. But I don’t see the Senate wanting to remove the word real-time, I mean, by way of issue of act, by saying we don’t want it immediately.

They also want it immediately because they say it should be transmitted immediately it is signed by the presiding officer and the agents, meaning it must be done immediately. But because they didn’t use the word real-time, people are now saying the Senate version is leaving room for issue of doing it later, several hours or several days or several weeks.

From what you said earlier; what do you think should guide against the sort of suspicion that people have over what the Senate is doing and how do you think that 2027 should be radically different from what we witnessed in 2023?

I am sure that members of the Harmonization Committee are hearing us. What Nigerians are saying is that since you agree that transmission now is mandatory, immediately the result is counted and declared at the polling unit, and signed by the presiding officer, and countersigned by the agent of the political party. Why don’t you put it that the transmission should be done immediately.

There shouldn’t be any gap left because the moment you don’t say that word, it may give room for manipulation by a very bad presiding officer, who may now want to transmit later. So, why don’t you put it there that it should be real time, that is, immediately everything is sorted out and there is no communication failure. But where people are having problem, again, is this issue of communication failure that the Senate inserted. They are saying, look, we are aware of what goes on with our system.

There may be some problem within the system, which happened in 2023. All of us were witnesses of the talk about glitch. That glitch may have occurred as a result of network failure, or somebody wanted to sabotage their effort, or due to even the device failure. Now, why don’t we give room that in case the electronic transmission fails, we have to use transfer of the result to the collation centre, and the primary source will still remain the form.

Remember that this form is also given to party agents and security officers, while the presiding officer has his own copy. So, I think that Nigerians should be looking towards building a system, where they can avoid this manipulation that happens between polling unit and the collation centre by ensuring that those who are agents of political parties are educated and that they know the law.

Whoever is going to be the collation agent of any politician must be educated and know the law. And if you know the law, make sure you keep a copy of your polling unit result, which you will give to your collation agent, who will be at the local government or at the ward level, in order to make sure that whatever they are collating is what happened at the polling unit.

That is what I did in 2023. We are there to ensure that what happened at the polling unit in our ward is what actually was recorded at the collation centre. So, that education is very key, because most of the time, I see political parties sending people who are illiterates, who know nothing about the electoral process as agents both at the polling unit and at the collation centre. Get educated men and women to man the polling units for you.

Get them to also man the collation centre. By the time you have all the results from the polling units given to the collation agent, when they start recording the results at the collation centre, you can say, no, this is not what happened at the polling unit. You can dispute it, because it’s the manual collation we are doing. It’s not electronic. It’s only for observation that we are talking about transmission. It’s very important we know that. People are thinking that this electronic transmission means it collates the result at the IREV. The IREV does not collate. It is still done at the collation centre.

So, we must make sure that we have people who are educated enough to help the political parties to achieve the aim of what Nigerians have actually expressed by voting at the collation centre, which is where the problem is, so that whatever you are counting is what is recorded at the polling unit. It’s very important and that is where I think Nigerians should pay attention to and concentrate in educating Nigerians to do the right thing, not necessarily this transmission because collation is still done manually.

If it comes to the collation centres essentially protecting our mandate and our votes, how significant is corruption at collation centres, and what should the National Assembly have done to prevent these issues from arising?

Everything cannot be solved by the law, but we can insist on certain things being done rightly. The issues of network, glitch device are important. We can go to advanced society and say give us the device that will not have any issue at all. Then, we must also talk to the network people that they must give network. The Federal Government must make sure that everywhere in the country has network. We must make that possible, so that somebody cannot use network as an issue.

The third one is that we now have to enact a law that says that even the results we are transmitting to IREV must also be collated at the IREV section, so that whatever I’m doing at the collation centre has already been done electronically. If it is 122, I will now cross-check here to see whether it is 122 I’m having here at the collation centre. So, collation must be done at IREV too. That is another method we can now use to really avoid manipulation. Look, let me just tell you about electronic input into anything that these people are doing in advanced societies.

They use technology to make things easier and efficient. But here in Africa, we are using technology in order to reduce manipulation by human beings. Some of our average African states have come to the level where they love their nation and they’re interested in making sure that the right thing is done for their nation. The Indians, the Chinese, they love their country. But here, how many people love Nigeria?

If you love your country, you will want to do the best both at the polling unit and at the collation centres. Even the network people, they must do the right thing. If the right thing is done, technology only comes to enhance the efficiency. But we are trying to now talk about technology in a bid to avoid human interference because there are too many corrupt individuals that are involved. That is why we are really clamouring for technology. We are not clamouring for technology in Nigeria because we want efficiency level to be improved.

We are clamouring because of the fact that we are very corrupt and we do not want things to be done properly. So, we now say, look, why don’t we use technology to avoid manipulation of human beings whereas in other countries, they use technology to enhance efficiency because naturally, they are patriotic to their nations. They want the right thing to be done for their nations. They want the right thing to be done for their people.

They know their children are born here and that they need to build a future for their country. But here, everyone is after for himself, for his stomach and that’s why people are saying is there any way we can avoid these human beings that are very corrupt and make sure that technology does the things that are supposed to be done by human beings. So the issue is that let’s not go further to not only say issue of electronic transmission.

Let the transmission itself to IREV also do the collation, so that what we do now is that we now cross-check what we have here physically with what electronically has been actually collated, so in that wise, we improve our system.

Also, we must also go for electronic voting. If we have not advanced to that level, this issue of real time and the issue of collation, if it’s not addressed, then we have not made much progress because we are still relying on human beings whom we know are very corrupt. And they are always very bad in doing things for the nation. They don’t want the nation to succeed in any way. They are always looking for loopholes. Even as this law has been made, people are looking for loopholes in order to make sure that the law is observed breach.