Competitiveness requires that opposition to incumbents enjoys the full complement of political rights to freely organize and mobilize against the incumbents. Where the political environment and voting process are suppressive and oppressive against some contestants for public offices, there are no democratic elections. The final fundamental element of a good electoral system is that the votes are accurately counted and announced. This is why, as Stalin once noted that those who count the votes are more important than those who cast the votes.

These core elements of a good electoral system are incorporated in our electoral laws and procedures. The Election Act of 2022 has improved on some of the deficiencies of the electoral system by providing safeguards against electoral fraud. Prevalent electoral frauds destroy the heart of electoral democracy because it substitutes the will of a few for the will of the people. Where elections are notoriously and consistently fraudulent, elections can no longer be competitive because the opposition will find it difficult to win the incumbents, even where there is clear demand by the electorates for change of leadership.

Free and fair elections have inherent and instrumental values. Inherently, free and fair elections make real the notion of political equality and self-determination at the heart of democracy as a value and practice. If elections are not free and fair, it means that the will of the few will trump the will of the majority.

It means that citizens are not self-determining because those who make and execute laws are not their representatives. Instrumentally, free and fair elections make strong the incentive structure of democratic governance that ensure political officeholders respond to the needs of the people because they could be removed from power next time.

The responsibility to realise these features of a good electoral system which are largely stated in our electoral law rests on INEC. Over the years, INEC has failed this responsibility. It is safe to say that since 1999 we have witnessed a continuing degeneration of the integrity of the electoral system.

Each general election seems to be worse than the preceding one. This is as the technology of electoral management improves. This degeneration of the integrity of the electoral system as its technological and logistical quality improves has made many to argue that the problem with elections in Nigeria is human agency not law, not technology. In support of the institutional pessimists, the fact that despite the incorporation of real-time electronic transmission of results from the polling units to the election view portal (IreV) and the assurances by INEC leadership that had a foolproof technology platform, the 2023 presidential election was rigged because INEC shut down the IreV and refused to electronically transmit results.

At the presidential tribunal, INEC argued that it had the discretion to go back on its commitment. INEC gutted its most secured guarantor of free and fair elections So, the 2023 presidential election failed because INEC decided to rig the election, not because technology failed or legal provisions were insufficient.

The reform of the electoral law in 2022 tried to improve the credibility and reliability of elections in Nigeria by eliminating the avenues for rigging. To ensure the accuracy of votes, it provides for biometric accreditation and mandates that where the result of votes in a polling unit is more the the total number of voters duly accredited through the biometric data capture system, the result is invalid.

The law also mandates that before voting begins the polling officers should write down in a prescribed form the serial numbers and other details of voting materials, result sheets and other sensitive material. Failure to do this is a substantial non-compliance that nullifies the result from the polling unit. In Edo governorship election, INEC refused to follow these safeguards and declared a result wildly different from those it uploaded on its electronic platform. In this instance, a strong safeguard against electoral manipulation was gutted by compromised and corrupt officials. Human agency fails the test as it did in the 2023 presidential election.

The argument in support of the role of human agency in the failure of Nigeria’s electoral system to meet the requirements of free and fair elections does not end with the administrative management of elections. It extends to the judicial management of elections through electoral dispute settlement.

The Electoral Act, 2022 provides a clear guide for effective and coherent judicial management of elections. It requires the court to nullify elections where these fundamental conditions of free and fair are not satisfied. But as the Edo Governorship Tribunal judgment shows, the human agency problem shows up again. Judges misconceive the essence of election jurisprudence and misdirect themselves to absolve corrupt electoral officers and approve clear electoral fraud.

Through the wrongful exercise of human agency, the judiciary undermines the institutional basis of electoral democracy by encouraging electoral manipulation.   

By its judgment delivered on April 2, 2025, the Edo Governorship Tribunal perpetuates the judicial support for electoral mismanagement. In that judgement, the Edo State Governorship Tribunal dismissed the petition of the PDP candidate at the governorship election against INEC for declaring the APC candidate as the duly elected Governor of Edo State in the 2024 governorship election.

The PDP candidate petitioned the Tribunal on the basis that the INEC invalidly declared the APC candidate as winner based on false invalid results. Evidence of independent poll watchers is that the declaration was fraudulently made with result sheets that were not the ones used at the polling units.

INEC allegedly printed two different result sheets and used one to declare results unrelated to the real results uploaded to its result viewing portal. Also, many polling units had results where the total votes declared for the candidates were more than the number of accredited voters. This is despite that the Electoral Act mandates that the serial numbers of all the materials used for voting should be written in a prescribed form before voting to ensure the authenticity of the results.

To be continued tomorrow.

Dr Amadi is the Director of Abuja School of Social and Political Thought.