Be careful of what you wish for
By Sam Kargbo
There is a curious angle in the ongoing public clamour for electronic transmission of votes and the proposal to make such electronically transmitted results the primary evidence of election outcomes — an angle that many either ignore or do not care to interrogate: who benefits if the system fails?
Electronic transmission is often presented as a technological cure for electoral malpractice. It is framed as modern, transparent, and incorruptible. However, technology is neither neutral nor infallible. In a complex and politically charged environment like Nigeria’s, the risks inherent in over-reliance on electronic systems must be soberly examined.
First, Nigeria’s infrastructure realities cannot be wished away. Large swathes of the country still experience unstable electricity, inconsistent telecommunications coverage, bandwidth limitations, and cyber security vulnerabilities. An election is not a staggered online registration exercise; it is a single, time-bound, nationwide event involving thousands of polling units transmitting data simultaneously. Even advanced democracies with stronger infrastructure experience system glitches during peak digital operations. In Nigeria, a nationwide system failure on election day is not a remote possibility — it is a plausible risk.
Second, cyber security threats are real. Election systems are prime targets for hackers — whether state-sponsored actors, politically motivated groups, or criminal networks. A successful system capture or coordinated cyber-attack could compromise transmitted results, delay collation, or render the system unreliable. The aftermath could justify cancellation, postponement, or selective nullification of results. In such chaos, the question must be asked: who is institutionally and financially positioned to survive a disrupted election cycle?
Third, constitutional timelines matter. Nigeria’s Constitution imposes strict limits within which elections must be conducted and concluded. If electronic transmission becomes the primary and indispensable legal evidence of votes, what happens if the system collapses in multiple states? Would elections be suspended? Would results be invalidated? Would the process be reset? A sitting government facing imminent defeat may have more incentive — and potentially more capacity — to exploit or benefit from such instability than an opposition operating without state resources.
Fourth, making electronically transmitted votes the sole or primary evidence elevates a technical layer above the physical act of voting. Traditionally, the physical ballot and the result sheet signed at the polling unit form the foundational evidence of the voter’s will. Reversing that hierarchy — by making the digital transmission the controlling proof — creates a single point of catastrophic failure. In system design, concentration of authority in one vulnerable layer is a known risk. Redundancy, not exclusivity, is the safer democratic principle.
This is not an argument against technology. Electronic transmission can enhance transparency, speed, and public confidence. But it must function as a complementary verification mechanism, not an exclusive determinant that can paralyze the entire constitutional order if it fails.
Democracy is not merely about innovation; it is about resilience. The true question is not whether electronic transmission is modern, but whether the system is fail-safe in a high-stakes political environment where actors may benefit from breakdowns. Before elevating electronically transmitted results to primary evidence, Nigeria must ensure robust infrastructure, layered redundancies, independent cyber-security audits, legal clarity on contingencies, and constitutional safeguards against opportunistic exploitation of system failure.
In electoral design, one principle should remain supreme: no technological failure should be capable of holding the sovereignty of the people hostage.
- Sam Kargbo, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), writes from Abuja.
