A former national commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mustapha Lecky, has said Nigeria is not technically prepared to adopt mandatory real-time electronic transmission of election results.
Speaking on Politics Today, a Channels Television programme, on Friday, Lecky argued that calls for instantaneous uploading of results from polling units are misplaced, noting that Nigeria still conducts elections through manual voting with paper ballots.
“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,” Lecky said. “We don’t do electronic voting anywhere. Are we doing electronic voting? We are very far away from it.”
He explained that election results must first be manually counted and verified at polling units in the presence of party agents before any electronic upload can take place. According to him, the EC8A result form — duly signed by party agents — remains the most critical document in the process.
Lecky added that existing tools such as INEC’s Result Viewing Portal (IReV) and the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) already provide adequate transparency, provided they are properly implemented.
He further warned that Nigeria lacks the nationwide infrastructure required for real-time electronic transmission, particularly reliable mobile network coverage in many rural polling areas, which could lead to system failures or expose the process to cyber risks.
“For electronic transmission, we are not ready. We are not technically ready,” Lecky said, cautioning that forcing the system without sufficient preparation could undermine the integrity of elections in a country with limited digital resilience.
