INEC, Earn Back Our Trust Before 2027

As Nigeria inches towards general elections now just about three months away, the Independent National Electoral Commission faces a deficit far more dangerous than logistics or funding. It faces a deficit of trust. And unless INEC confronts it now, with urgency and sincerity, the next election will be discredited long before the first ballot is cast.

The truth is uncomfortable but undeniable. The 2023 general elections damaged public confidence in our democracy. For months, Nigerians were assured that technology, especially the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System and the IReV portal, would guarantee transparency and end rigging. On election day, that promise collapsed in too many places. Results failed to transmit, explanations were late and contradictory, and collation descended into chaos. For millions, the feeling was not mere disappointment. It was betrayal. INEC cannot treat 2023 as a technical hiccup. It was a credibility crisis, and the Commission must accept that it is not starting from neutral but from deep public scepticism.

Restoring confidence in the next ninety days will require proof, not platitudes. INEC must fix its technology and be brutally honest about it. Technology is only useful if it is reliable, tested and backed by a transparent fallback plan. Nigerians do not need another round of grand promises about real-time uploads if the system will fail again when it matters. With the clock ticking, the Commission must conduct extensive, public stress-tests of its infrastructure, publish the results, and clearly state what happens when systems fail. A failure with a credible, pre-announced remedy is manageable. A failure met with silence and improvisation breeds conspiracy and violence.

That honesty must extend to how results are handled. The black box of collation must be dismantled completely. An election is not credible because a winner is declared; it is credible because every citizen can trace how that winner emerged from their polling unit. INEC must make the chain of custody for results unbreakable and visible. From polling unit to ward, to local government and national collation centres, every step must be open to party agents, observers and the media in real time. Any gap, any unexplained delay, any room for figures to be altered behind closed doors is an invitation to endless litigation.

At the same time, INEC must end disenfranchisement by administration. Every cycle repeats the same shameful story of Nigerians who registered but cannot find their Permanent Voter Cards, who cannot transfer their polling units, who queue for days only to be told the machine has failed. These are not inconveniences. They are denials of constitutional rights. With just months to go, there is no excuse for not cleaning the voter register, aggressively decentralising PVC collection to the ward level, and making voter verification seamless.

But INEC cannot carry this burden alone and must not be made a scapegoat for a wider political rot. Political parties are the primary culprits in the commercialisation and militarisation of our elections. You cannot preach democracy while buying votes, sponsoring thugs and imposing candidates through sham primaries. Security agencies must protect voters, not act as armed wings of incumbents. The judiciary must deliver prompt, substantive justice, not protracted technicalities that make the ballot meaningless. And citizens must resist selling their votes for short-term gain that guarantees long-term misery.

Ultimately, the 2027 election will not be won or lost on election day. It will be won or lost in the decisions INEC makes in the next three months. Will it communicate openly even when the truth is uncomfortable? Will it punish its own compromised staff? Will it demand and defend its institutional independence from a federal government that must fund it adequately?

Nigerians are not asking for a perfect election. They are asking for an honest one where votes count, the process is visible, and the umpire is not only impartial but seen to be so. INEC still has a narrow window to restore confidence. But trust, once lost, is far harder to retrieve than any ballot box.