A former National Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mustapha Lecky, has argued that Nigeria was neither legally nor technically prepared for real-time electronic transmission of election results, insisting that the demand was misplaced under the country’s current electoral framework.
Lecky made the remarks on Friday while appearing as a guest on Channels Television’s current affairs programme, ‘Politics Today’.
His comments come amid intense public backlash against the Senate, which on Wednesday declined to amend Section 60 of the Electoral Act, 2022 to mandate the real-time electronic transmission of results from polling units to INEC’s Result Viewing (IReV) Portal.
Reacting to the controversy, Lecky maintained that calls for instantaneous transmission ignored the reality that Nigeria still conducts elections through manual voting.
“I think it doesn’t really make sense to me that we should be talking about instantaneous transmission of results live as it is happening from the polling area. It doesn’t make sense because we don’t do electronic voting anywhere,” he said.
According to him, electronic transmission of results can only logically follow the adoption of electronic voting, which Nigeria was yet to implement.
“Are we doing electronic voting? We are very far away from it,” he added.
Lecky explained that the electoral process requires results to be manually counted at polling units before any upload can take place, stressing that the existing system already ensures transparency.
“People are still coming with paper ballots. You have to count them for everybody to see, one by one, before you now fill out the form EC8A, which is the most important document that needs to be filled and signed by all the agents representing the parties,” he said.
He described demands for real-time electronic transmission of election results as “baseless,” noting that the country lacked the necessary technical infrastructure to support nationwide implementation, particularly in areas with poor or non-existent internet coverage.
“For electronic transmission, we are not ready. We are not technically ready,” Lecky stated.
The former INEC National Commissioner also cautioned that rushing into instant transmission without adequate safeguards could expose the electoral process to cyber threats, especially given Nigeria’s fragile digital resilience.
“We have to take the cue from even more mature democracies where these things are still evolving. So you can imagine our own fledgling democracy,” he said.
However, he urged INEC to continue improving the use of existing tools such as the IReV Portal and the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), stressing that they should be made to function optimally.
“So what we need to do, I think, in terms of this transmission of results, is to rely on what is currently available and make sure it works perfectly—and it can work perfectly,” he stated.
