Nigeria’s Senate undermines democracy: Across Africa, leaders have learned that power no longer needs bayonets; it only needs pliable parliaments and elastic constitutions. Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni rewrote the rules to remain in office into his eighties. Cameroon’s Paul Biya perfected the same trick into his nineties. Côte d’Ivoire and Tanzania neutralised rivals through manipulated processes rather than bullets. The lesson is clear: democracy can be killed quietly, with statutes instead of soldiers… Nigerians must insist that real-time electronic transmission of results be written clearly and unambiguously into law. Not as an option. Not as a guideline. As a command. When elections lose credibility, courts replace voters. When courts replace voters, politics loses legitimacy. And when legitimacy disappears, instability follows. Nigeria must resist both military coups and constitutional coups. One arrives with guns. The other arrives with gavels. Both end the same way: in the burial of the people’s will. Democracy does not die suddenly. It dies in committee rooms. It dies in amended clauses. It dies when those entrusted to protect it choose instead to preserve themselves. This Senate must be stopped. Not for the sake of any party, but for the survival of the republic itself.
By Uche J. Udenka
When lawmakers become the lawbreakers
Nigeria is standing at a dangerous crossroads. What is unfolding is not a military takeover with tanks and decrees, but something more insidious: a constitutional ambush executed through lawmaking. Across Africa, leaders have learned that power no longer needs bayonets; it only needs pliable parliaments and elastic constitutions. Uganda’s Yoweri Museveni rewrote the rules to remain in office into his eighties. Cameroon’s Paul Biya perfected the same trick into his nineties. Côte d’Ivoire and Tanzania neutralised rivals through manipulated processes rather than bullets. The lesson is clear: democracy can be killed quietly, with statutes instead of soldiers.
Nigeria now risks joining this hall of infamy.
When elections become rituals, tyranny becomes policy
The 10th Senate, under the leadership of Godswill Akpabio, has taken a decisive step in that direction through its handling of the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill. Instead of closing the loopholes that wrecked public confidence in the 2023 elections, the Senate has preserved them. Most dangerously, it refused to make real-time electronic transmission of results mandatory. It chose ambiguity over certainty, discretion over transparency, and political convenience over democratic integrity. At the heart of this controversy is Section 60(3) of the 2022 Electoral Act, which allows INEC to transmit results “in a manner prescribed by the Commission.” This language is vague by design. It gives INEC the power to choose between electronic and manual transmission. In theory, it offers flexibility. In practice, it opens the door to manipulation. We saw the consequences in 2023. INEC promised Nigerians that polling unit results would be uploaded to the IReV portal in real time. On election day, that promise evaporated. “Technical glitches” replaced accountability. Results appeared that bore no resemblance to what voters saw at their polling units. Courts then leaned on the loophole in the law to uphold disputed outcomes, arguing that IReV was merely for public viewing and not legally binding. That moment was a turning point. It taught politicians that elections can be lost at the polling unit and won at the collation centre. It taught citizens that their votes can be outvoted by procedure. And it taught institutions that vagueness is the enemy of democracy.
The National Assembly had an opportunity to correct this injustice. Instead, the Senate chose to preserve it.
How legal loopholes became political strategy
Akpabio insists that the Senate did not reject electronic transmission, only that it retained the existing provision. That defence is hollow. The issue is not whether electronic transmission is allowed. It is whether it is compulsory. Democracy does not survive on optional transparency. A process that can be bypassed will be bypassed. The Senate President’s argument that mandatory real-time transmission could fail if networks collapse is equally flimsy. Elections are conducted with satellite phones, military logistics, and biometric devices. Nigeria’s national grid has collapsed repeatedly without suspending the constitution. The fear of network failure is not a technical concern; it is a political excuse. It is the same reasoning that made rigging possible in 2023. Ironically, the House of Representatives has already provided a clear alternative. Its version of the bill requires presiding officers to upload results to IReV in real time after Form EC8A is signed and stamped. That language is precise. It is enforceable. It leaves little room for creative interpretation. The Senate rejected this clarity in favour of elastic law.
This is not an accident. It is strategy.
Ambiguity as policy, discretion
Those who cannot win credible elections seek to control the rules of the game. Many of today’s office holders know that a truly transparent process would expose the fragility of their mandates. That is why the system must remain foggy. That is why results must travel through human hands instead of digital records. That is why courts must decide elections instead of voters. This legislative sabotage coincides with another worrying trend: the systematic hollowing out of opposition politics. Governors elected under opposition parties have defected in droves to the ruling APC. Delta, Akwa Ibom, Enugu, Rivers, Bayelsa, and even Kano have joined the parade. Today, the ruling party controls 30 of Nigeria’s 36 states. The PDP has been reduced to four states. Other parties survive on political oxygen. The logic behind these defections is flawed. It assumes that governors can migrate with the souls of their people. They cannot. Tinubu lost Lagos in 2023 despite controlling its political machinery. Power can intimidate officials and contractors, but it cannot permanently subdue popular conscience. History shows that when suffering deepens, loyalty weakens. Suffering has deepened.
Citizens are dying. Politicians are campaigning
Nigeria today is a nation in distress. Health workers strike over unpaid wages. Universities decay while students wander. Over 140 million Nigerians are projected to live in extreme poverty in 2026. Entire communities in Kaduna, Benue, Plateau, Niger, Borno and Katsina are being emptied by bandits and terrorists. Villages are wiped out. Kidnapping has become an industry. The state has lost its monopoly on violence. In a bitter irony, it was a foreign power—the United States—that recently struck terrorist camps in Sokoto, not Nigeria’s own security architecture. Nigerians now watch external actors display more urgency than their own government. The implication is humiliating and dangerous: a country unable to protect its citizens but obsessed with preserving power. The obsession with 2027 is already distorting governance. Instead of reforming elections to rebuild trust, politicians are refining the instruments of fraud. Instead of addressing insecurity, they are rearranging party structures. Instead of fighting poverty, they are fighting over succession. This is why the Electoral Act matters. It is not a technical document. It is the spinal cord of the republic. If it is bent, the nation limps. If it is broken, democracy collapses. Voter turnout tells the story of this collapse. In 2007, 57.5% of Nigerians voted. By 2011, it dropped to 53.7%. In 2015, 43.7%. In 2019, 34.7%. In 2023, a catastrophic 27.1%. Each election pushes citizens further away from the ballot box. People do not abandon voting because they are lazy; they abandon it because it no longer works.
Countries like Ghana, Liberia, and Senegal have shown that credible elections are possible in Africa. Nigeria once led this continent politically and morally. Today, it risks becoming another case study in democratic decay. This is why the Senate’s action is not just bad lawmaking. It is a coup by clause. It is power wearing robes instead of camouflage. It is the replacement of ballots with loopholes. The Conference Committee between the two chambers still has a chance to rescue this process. Nigerians must insist that real-time electronic transmission of results be written clearly and unambiguously into law. Not as an option. Not as a guideline. As a command. When elections lose credibility, courts replace voters. When courts replace voters, politics loses legitimacy. And when legitimacy disappears, instability follows. Nigeria must resist both military coups and constitutional coups. One arrives with guns. The other arrives with gavels. Both end the same way: in the burial of the people’s will.
Democracy does not die suddenly. It dies in committee rooms. It dies in amended clauses. It dies when those entrusted to protect it choose instead to preserve themselves.
This Senate must be stopped. Not for the sake of any party, but for the survival of the republic itself.
- Arc. Uche J. Udenka, a social and political analyst, promoter of the #AfricaVisionAdvancementTrust and C.E.O. Igbo Renaissance Awakening, writes from Ghana.
