My brother, Dr. Ubani Monday Onyekachi’s commentary on the Electoral Amendment Bill 2026 (Electoral Amendment Bill 2026: Clarifying the Architecture of Electronic Transmission and Collation published on his Facebook page on 18 February 2026) is framed as institutional moderation. In substance, however, it functions as a carefully constructed apology for legal ambiguity in a system that has already demonstrated its capacity for abuse. What he presents as “pragmatism” is, in reality, a defence of structural weakness. What he calls “evolutionary reform” is, in practice, managed stagnation.
At a moment when Nigeria requires maximal electoral certainty, his intervention normalises discretion, vagueness, and institutional latitude; precisely the conditions under which electoral malpractice thrives.
The core of Ubani’s argument rests on the claim that allowing Form EC8A to override electronic transmission in cases of “communication failure” is a reasonable safeguard.
This is misleading.
In modern electoral governance, redundancy is acceptable only when it is automatic, objective, and independently verifiable. The Nigerian amendment meets none of these criteria.
Under the proposed framework communication failure” is undefined, the declaration of failure is discretionary, the fallback document is manually generated and the same local officials implicated in manipulation control the process.
This is not redundancy, it is institutionalised loophole engineering.
In a country where elections are routinely contested over altered result sheets, missing forms, and substituted figures, any system that allows manual documents to supersede digital records is inherently vulnerable. No amount of rhetorical reassurance can change that.
A serious reform would have made electronic transmission the exclusive legal record, with physical forms serving only as archival backups, not alternative authorities.
Ubani gestures vaguely at “telecommunications improvements” while still defending a manual override. This contradiction is revealing.
If infrastructure has improved sufficiently to justify electronic transmission, then it has improved sufficiently to eliminate manual supremacy. If it has not, then electronic transmission itself is premature.
You cannot logically defend both positions.
What the amendment actually reflects is political compromise; lawmakers unwilling to surrender the traditional mechanisms through which elections are negotiated after voting has ended.
Ubani’s principal “solution” is to urge INEC to clarify the ambiguities through guidelines.
This is constitutionally perverse.
In a democracy governed by law, fundamental electoral safeguards must be embedded in statute, not outsourced to regulators.
By deferring core definitions to the Independent National Electoral Commission, the legislature weakens judicial enforcement, expands bureaucratic discretion, and politicises administrative rule-making.
Guidelines can be revised quietly, statutes cannot.
If the National Assembly were serious about transparency, it would legislate exact timelines, objective failure thresholds, automatic audit trails, and independent verification triggers.
Its refusal to do so is not accidental, it is strategic.
Ubani repeatedly appeals to “operational vigilance” and party preparedness. This shifts responsibility from institutions to victims.
Well-designed systems do not rely on constant alertness, they reduce the scope for abuse.
In mature democracies, electoral integrity is achieved through automated validation, tamper-resistant architecture, and minimal human discretion.
Nigeria’s amendment moves in the opposite direction. It expands discretion while preaching vigilance.
That is governance by moral exhortation, not by engineering.
Ubani’s most important observation is almost treated as an aside; the dilution of Section 137 reforms on documentary evidence. This is not incidental, it is central.
The 2022 reform sought to align Nigerian electoral litigation with modern evidentiary standards. It recognised that digital records, certified documents, and system logs should be sufficient proof of irregularities.
Reverting to mass witness production favours wealthy litigants, punishes smaller parties, exhausts judicial timelines and privileges logistics over truth.
It is a regression designed to make electoral justice procedurally inaccessible. In effect, it shields fraud through exhaustion.
By downplaying this rollback, Ubani understates its systemic danger.
The most revealing part of Ubani’s article is his conclusion; Electoral reform is evolutionary and not revolutionary.”
This is a rhetorical shield for inertia.
Nigeria has been “evolving” electorally for over two decades. The same disputes recur, patterns persist and courts are overwhelmed.
Incrementalism is defensible only when it produces measurable progress. In this case, it produces managed ambiguity.
What is evolving is not integrity, it is the sophistication of manipulation.
Ubani frames assent as a technical issue, it is not.
If President Bola Ahmed Tinubu signs a bill that preserves manual override and weakens judicial review, he will be endorsing structural opacity.
Civil society’s opposition is not sentimental, it is institutional.
A president committed to democratic consolidation would insist on digital primacy, legal certainty and judicial accessibility.
Anything less is complicity.
Ubani praises “institutional movement.” But movement toward what? The amendment preserves discretionary control, retains manual dominance, weakens litigation reform, defers clarity, and expands contestability.
This is not reform. It is institutional self-preservation by the political class through controlled uncertainty.
The National Assembly of Nigeria has not resolved Nigeria’s electoral crisis, it has managed it.
The closing appeal to faith and hope is emotionally appealing. It is also politically dangerous.
Democracy does not survive on goodwill. It survives on predictable rules, enforceable rights, technological safeguards, and judicial accessibility.
Where these are weak, appeals to patriotism become instruments of pacification. Citizens are not obliged to “have faith” in flawed systems, they are entitled to demand better ones.
In conclusion, Dr. Ubani performs a familiar function in Nigerian public discourse; he reframes structural defects as reasonable compromises and treats citizen skepticism as excessive.
By doing so, it shifts attention away from why discretion remains entrenched, manual override persists, judicial reform is reversed, and clarity is avoided.
His analysis is technically literate but politically accommodating. It explains the system without challenging its incentives.
And that is precisely the problem.
A credible electoral reform in 2026 should have made electronic transmission legally supreme, eliminated discretionary “failure” declarations, strengthened documentary evidence rules, reduced human intervention and embedded transparency in statute.
This bill does none of these decisively.
Until it does, Nigerians are not witnessing evolution, they are witnessing the refinement of uncertainty.
And uncertainty, in Nigeria’s electoral history, has always served one constituency; those who benefit from disputed outcomes.
