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INEC has reached a dead-end, now a danger to Nigerian democracy – Nwankwo
On Monday, Clement Nwankwo, foremost Nigerian constitutional lawyer and Founding Convener of the Civil Society Monitoring Situation Room, was a guest of Prime Time, a current affairs programme on Arise News Television. There, he painted the picture of the stark reality of Nigeria’s parlous electoral system.
Using the outcomes of the offseason elections that took place in Bayelsa, Kogi and Imo States, to assess the situation, the human rights activists, came to the conclusion that the nation’s electoral process has come to a dead-end and therefore could not carry it beyond this stage, not to talk about the general election in 2027. What would result would not be elections, but chaos. Excerpts:
What is your verdict on the offseason elections in Bayelsa, Kogi and Imo?
The Situation Room has issued a statement on these elections. The verdict is unequivocal, which is it was a huge disappointment. We had thought that given the disappointments in the 2023 general elections that there would been some efforts by INEC to do a better job, but apparently, this is a worse job and for some of us it is extremely sad to see elections conducted this way in this country.
It brings to question how this democracy will continue and how this democracy will thrive if we cannot give citizens the option of deciding who rules them. The electoral system in this country has collapsed and we have to go back to the drawing board. Certainly we cannot build anything to what is now. The system has been captured and it is delivering incredibly sad results, not in terms of who wins or who doesn’t win, but in terms of the process, in terms of the abuses of the process, in terms of citizens’ lack of confidence in elections as a way of running a referendum on those who have ruled them or given a chance for people to take over.
The country has lost its electoral system and we certainly can only revive it if citizens ask the right questions and make the demands that should be made. When you look at the elections and look at the facts before the elections, those who were given responsibilities for the running of the elections, have been seen to be people who have been compromised, where partisan political elements have been appointed into the electoral commission, where half of the electoral commission and officials of the electoral commission have basically allocated themselves to serve political interests, then I think where we are today is a very sad one and this country’s democracy cannot go any further with the kind of election administration system that we have in place today.
But what do you think are responsible? Is it about bread and butter, poverty, corruption, violence, what are the specifics at the heart of this election?
Certainly, bread and butter issues relate to who can halt the slide in which the country is descending into. Certainly when you look at people’s condition, you see a worse trend previously and it doesn’t look like there is anything in the horizon that promises a break from the fall. So, I think for people, it is a major issue. But beyond that is that those who are seeking political power are taking advantage of the huge poverty that has descended on the land and now basically taking advantage of the situation – buying elections, paying people off to vote for them – vote-buying is at an unmitigated proportion. So, it’s like people struggle so hard to purchase the election. They struggle so hard to purchase the election. They struggle so hard when they purchase the election, to use the proceeds of being in office to buy the next election.
So, in my view, is that perhaps we’ve come to a dead-end with the present electoral system and we must ask ourselves what lies ahead.
Is it then a question of incumbency powers because the incumbents won in all the states?
The incumbents won in all the three states which is really not unexpected in normal electoral system, but we don’t have evidence that people voted freely. You set up a process, you decide that people go to vote, you decide election results are calculated, are tabulated, collated at the polling units and then escalated to the different levels of collation, you expect that at the immediate primary unit, you have the polling unit, that immediately the results are counted, the result sheets are uploaded and people can see that real-time. But in this election, we saw results being ready before the election.
We are doing analysis of what has been uploaded and there is a huge discrepancy in what has been uploaded to the IReV. The whole idea of the IReV is that the IReV was supposed to be real-life uploading of results. But now, there is a huge question about the efficiency of the IReV. It is now a tool to upload whatever you feel – not real-time, not real results. So, there is a major question of where we are with elections in this country.
It’s amazing when politicians who are supposed to protect the integrity of these elections and the values of this country, have become the ones who have infiltrated this country and have decimated every institution in it, not the least the ones that have to do with elections. Is that an exaggeration or a fair assessment of how things are?
It’s certainly not an exaggeration. You can see that with what has played out in the elections, you can see that in what has played out with the reports of the election observers. The media, thankfully have been very beautiful in putting out these reports in real time. Everything sacred have been desecrated by the politicians and those given responsibility to uphold their sacredness.
That is the point that I make. If all of these institutions, if the politicians have found a way of manipulating it, if so much fund is taken out of the public treasury to buy election results – and that’s why you’ll see an incumbent would win because they have access to unparalleled resources – whether an incumbent from an opposition party, an incumbent from the ruling party, it’s the same trait.
So how can Nigeria get out of this explosion of irregularities, corruption and violence in elections?
I think in 2007 when an incredibly horrible election was conducted in this country, when President Yar’Adua of blessed memory came into office, he came into office and said, I’m really sorry Nigerians, this election result that brought me into office, lack credibility, now let us see how we can pull ourselves from where we were. That was how the election reform committee was set up, headed by Justice Muhammed Lawal Uwais, which had so many members including Prof. Attahiru Jega, who later became the chairman of the electoral commission.
That President understood what went wrong, admitted it and called people to a conversation. So, that was one way and I think that we in the civil society, we are citizens of this country, we must raise our voices to say that these electoral system has collapsed. We can’t trust those you have appointed into office. You have appointed your political acolytes and put them into the management of elections. So, we don’t trust the electoral system anymore. We don’t trust the officials, we don’t trust the commission and we don’t trust that this process will help us save our democracy.
To save this democracy, this administration must come to the realization that citizens have no more confidence.
But do you detect the will in President Bola Tinubu towards cleaning up the electoral process? If he does, can he or anyone fix such an overwhelmingly corrupt system?
There were recent nominations of state Resident Electoral Commissioners. And these were approved within a few minutes by the plenary at the National Assembly. Now, those nominations, several of them should never have been made because of the political taints of some of those who were in that list. For me, that’s a very sad signal.
But whether the administration likes it or not, whether the President likes it or not, I think it is important that he listens to what Nigerians are saying, which is that this system has failed. If this system has failed and you still have a couple of offseason elections, about four or five, leading up to 2027, it is only going to get worse and in 2027, I don’t know whether it can be called elections. It certainly won’t be if this trajectory continues.
At that stage, it will become clear even to the President that this country’s democracy is on its tatters and will drop and collapse, because certainly what we have today, cannot take us to the next general elections.
So, outside the Justice Uwais recommendations, what other steps do you recommend to maintain the sanctity of the elections?
I think there have been several recommendations made. One is with the electoral commission itself. I think what we have today as electoral commission needs to be set aside in a legal way. The National Assembly needs to be brought into this conversation and the President needs to go back to several of the reports and set up a committee that has people, stakeholders who will sit down and decide which aspects of these recommendations need now to be implemented.
The most important is the method of the appointment of the election management team. I think we have to go back to the drawing board to start this process. I do not think that the electoral management team as it exists today can take this country to the next election. By this I mean INEC. We need to have a new system that creates a new electoral commission, that creates a new election management team and follows the process that has been outlined in various recommendations that have been made, especially in the Uwais Committee reports that have indicated how you can appoint the INEC chairman, how you can appoint INEC National Commissioners.
Indeed, we have to back to the question of whether indeed we need Resident Electoral Commissioners, because when governors send names of nominees to be appointed RECs or where political parties send names, what it does is destroy the system. That’s why you have the Resident Electoral Commissioner acting with arbitrariness without responsibility and without accountability.
We have to do this even before the next off-circle elections. Certainly we can’t go on with this king of electoral management body and we can’t go on with this kind of abused electoral process. This democracy will collapse very soon if we don’t check the type of electoral management system we have in this country, because citizens have lost faith totally in elections in this country.
But are those policies in themselves going to be enough or will government have to go back to social policies, because we know that corruption and electoral malpractices thrive when there is poverty?
But you know you cannot solve poverty quite quickly but you can fix the election system quite quickly. When people understand that they can vote without the process being abused, then you begin to see better electoral officials respond to citizens’ demands. But if you blame the abuses entirely on citizens and refuse to do what we need to do in terms of policy changes, in terms of legal changes in terms of constitutional changes, then we would have to pray that this democracy survives.
What optimistic note can you sound from your observation and analysis of this election?
I think it is difficult to be very optimistic about this election. I think what surprised a few people even though there was a low turnout, what surprised quite a lot of people is that the turnout was as much as it was even though it was low, which means that citizens still have some interest. There are still people saying, look, we could still have confidence in elections if we fix it. So, in some ways, people have not totally given up on the electoral system. But it won’t go on for too long. In fact, it won’t go on till 2027. It won’t.
These points that you made, which are very poignant, which are very important and very pointed remarks, were they incorporated in the situation room report in stark terms?
It is incorporated in very stark terms. The Situation Room report today during a press conference addressed by the Convener Yinousa Y’Au, which basically made the point that these elections represent a huge disappointment and this country cannot continue on this trajectory. That’s very clear.
“Nothing must happen to Peter Obi. An injury to one is an injury to all. When one opposition leader is intimidated, every opposition voice is diminished,” came the immediate reaction of Atiku Abubakar candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), in the 2027 presidential election on Thursday.
It was a day Atiku, who came second in the 2023 election and Obi, third, in the declaration made by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), also asked for the release of Nasir el-Rufai, former governor of Kaduna, warning that democracy is threatened when opposition figures are intimidated.
Obi, Governor of Anambra State between 2006 to 2014, had accused the federal government of deliberately frustrating his means of livelihood and targeting opposition figures, while appearing on #WithChude podcast, a programme hosted by Chude Jidonwo, a popular Nigerian social media host.
On the same Tuesday, Obi’s outing broke on social media, where he claimed that the way the Tinubu government was pursuing him, he was not sure of making it to the 2027 election alive, the family of the former Kaduna State Governor, also came publicly to describe stark details of what the family head, currently in detention since February this year, has been facing.
Conveying his distaste on the two situations through, Phrank Shaibu, his spokesman, Atiku, Nigeria’s Vice President between 1999 and 2007, added: “When one citizen begins to fear because of his political beliefs, democracy itself becomes the casualty.”
In a quick riposte to the scant regard, Aso Rock seemed to have placed on Obi’s fears, the former VP, said: “The Presidency must understand that democratic leadership demands composure, not contempt. When a citizen, particularly an opposition figure, voices concerns about the state of the nation or his personal safety, the first duty of government is to reassure through statesmanship, facts and responsible conduct—not through insults.
“Democracies are strengthened by reasoned engagement, not by invective. A government that answers every criticism with abuse projects insecurity, not confidence. The opposition is not the enemy of Nigeria.
“Poverty is the enemy. Hunger is the enemy. Insecurity is the enemy. Corruption is the enemy. Kidnapping is the enemy. The daily bloodletting across our communities is the enemy. A government that devotes more energy to attacking its critics than confronting these existential challenges has confused political survival with the purpose of governance. There are schoolchildren and teachers still waiting to be reunited with their families. There are countless innocent Nigerians languishing in the camps of kidnappers,” he said.
“These are the emergencies that deserve the full machinery of government—not endless political sparring with opposition figures. The Federal Government must devote the same urgency it applies to political communication to rescuing kidnapped Nigerians and restoring public confidence in national security.”
Regarding the plight of el-Rufai, Atiku stated: “The continued detention of Mallam Nasir El-Rufai has generated widespread public concern. Every Nigerian, irrespective of political affiliation, is entitled to due process, equal protection under the law and the presumption of innocence until proven guilty by a competent court. Justice must never create the appearance of selective application.
“Public confidence is not restored through insults or propaganda. It is restored through openness, accountability and the courage to answer legitimate questions,” he said.
“Governments earn trust by confronting controversy with facts, strengthening institutions and demonstrating that no one is above scrutiny. Our elders say: ‘When the drums of injustice beat for your neighbour, do not dance, for tomorrow they may beat for you. Every Nigerian, regardless of political affiliation, has a stake in defending the democratic space. Release Mallam Nasir El-Rufai.
“Bring home every abducted schoolchild, every teacher and every innocent Nigerian still languishing in the hands of kidnappers.
“Stop chasing political opponents and start confronting the crises that are bleeding our nation. History will not remember how fiercely a government fought its critics.
“It will remember whether it protected its citizens, upheld justice, rescued the vulnerable and preserved the democracy entrusted to its care.”
“They apologised to me privately. I said they should put it on social media. They said they will not put it on social media, it will affect their credibility, because it’s not just them, but their other programmers at the Al Jazeera network too.”
These were the words of Daniel Bwala, while giving further insight into what has transpired along the line since his controversial interview with Mehdi Hasan of Al Jazeera, a global television network in March 2026, stating that the station privately apologised to him.
Bwala, who appeared on The Morayo Show, a private talk-show programme, hosted by Morayo Afolabi-Brown, a popular television presenter, however said because both Mehdi and Al Jazeera, refused to make the apology public, he was prompted him to instruct his lawyers in England to sue for defamation.
Clips on the controversial outing in which Bwala, spokesman for the campaign of Atiku Abubakar during his presidential bid in 2023, were in the public domain for several weeks after where a groundswell of commentators believed his performance was not only underwhelming, but he was outrightly disgraced.
He added: “The substance of the apology was that they should have told me that part of what they discussed with me was a talking point, that they were also going to interrogate me on my credibility for supporting the person I had attacked before.
“By their own ethics, they ought to have told me that, but they said they were sorry they didn’t. If you’re bold, if you call yourself a journalist, a fact-checker, you run your programme live and let people judge live.
“If you’re thinking straight, that’s what you’d do. You took creative control of the programme. You made a recorded programme. Ethics demanded you publish it exactly as it was recorded.”
Informing that the programme ran for one hour and 30 minutes but Al Jazeera published only 49 minutes, he accused the network of skewing the footage in Hasan’s favour, adding: “The deeper point is that they cut out the parts where I was fact-checking him and the crowd was clapping for me, and instead kept the parts where he was speaking and people were clapping for him. He’d ask me a question, I’d deny it, then he’d play the old clip. We call that ‘cut and joined’ in media. After doing that, which amounts to a smear campaign, he didn’t give me the chance to react to it.
“Instead, he let it appear that I was simply asked a question, denied it, was shown the clip, denied it again, was shown another clip, and denied it again. He removed that part, because if he’d left it in, anyone watching would understand that I had already answered the question upfront, and that my later denials were a response to his repeated bringing it up. That’s where the unethical conduct of a professional issue arose.
“When they apologised, I said no, put it on social media. They refused. So, I instructed my lawyers in England to go to court. The case is currently in court. Because my advisers in England said it’s defamation of character.”
More successes are being recorded by Nigerian forces trying to rout out terrorist in parts of the country, with emerging reports indicating that the perpetrators are currently running scared from the hot onslaughts they are getting from the operatives.
Channels Television, is quoting military authorities at the Operation Hadin kai (OPHK) conducting military blitzkrieg against the terrorists in the North East as saying that the troops received six Islamic State of West African Province (ISWAP), one of the major terrorist groups operating in the area, who surrendered alongside their families, at the 192 Battalion (Main) Sector 1 of the body.
Quoting a statement on Wednesday by Mohammed Goni, spokesman of the military operation, with headquarters in Maiduguri, Borno State, the report, said that among the items recovered from the terrorists and their families included a cumulative sum of more than N1.5 million, two Tecno mobile phones, and other items.
Th statement, added that troops of 115 Task Force Battalion, while conducting ongoing search and rescue operations in Askira/Uba Local Government Area of Borno State, on July 7, rescued two additional abductees from a terrorist hideout, where they also recovered cash of N1.2 million suspected to be proceeds of criminal activities, food items, and other logistics believed to have supported terrorist operations.
The rescued victims have since been evacuated to a secure location where they are receiving appropriate medical care and psychosocial support, the report said, adding that during the same period, the troops noted that it contained a coordinated attack by ISWAP terrorists in Borno, and one of the soldiers was killed.
“Although the insurgents briefly exploited a section of the base’s defensive perimeter during the intense firefight, the troops rapidly regrouped, mounted a determined counter-offensive and decisively expelled the attackers, inflicting significant casualties and forcing the surviving terrorists to flee with varying degrees of gunshot wounds.
“Regrettably, one gallant soldier paid the supreme price, while two gun-trucks and some combat enablers sustained damage during the engagement. The situation at FOB Logomani remains firmly under the control of Operation HADIN KAI troops, with reinforcements deployed, exploitation operations ongoing and additional measures being implemented to further strengthen the defensive resilience of the location.”
Detailing how troops of 232 Battalion apprehended a notorious criminal in Gombi Local Government Area of Adamawa State, the statement, said: “Follow-up exploitation of the arrest led to the recovery of one AK-47 rifle, two magazines, and twenty-eight rounds of 7.62mm special ammunition.
“The suspect and recovered items are currently in military custody, while further investigations are underway to identify and apprehend other members of the criminal network.”
Similarly, the statement said troops of the 149 Battalion arrested two suspected terrorist logistics suppliers in the Mobbar Local Government Area of Borno State.
The recovered items include cash sums, a Volkswagen Golf vehicle, construction materials, household items, and other supplies suspected to have been destined for terrorist elements.
The suspects are currently undergoing interrogation, while the recovered items remain in military custody as investigations continue.
As part of ongoing offensive operations, troops of 24 Task Force Brigade, in conjunction with members of the Civilian Joint Task Force, conducted a clearance operation on known terrorist enclaves around Wulgo.
During the operation, the troops said they exploited the terrorists’ hasty withdrawal and recovered a sack containing assorted illicit drugs abandoned by the fleeing insurgents.
“The recovery further underscores the sustained pressure being mounted on terrorist elements, denying them freedom of movement and disrupting their operational capabilities.”
Relatedly, the troops apprehended a suspected BHT/ISWAP logistics supplier at the Molai checkpoint in possession of large quantities of medical supplies without due clearance. The suspect and items recovered are in custody for further interrogation.
Again, in Sector 2 Area of Responsibility, Troops of 233 Tank Battalion, in conjunction with local hunters, intercepted and arrested a suspected BHT/ISWAP terrorist logistics supplier from Ngirya village of Tarmuwa LGA with five motorcycle tires. The suspect and items are in military custody for investigation.
“These latest operational gains underscore the effectiveness of sustained offensive operations, actionable intelligence and the seamless collaboration among security agencies and auxiliary forces in dismantling terrorist logistics networks, disrupting criminal activities and protecting vulnerable communities across the North East”, the statement added.
Headquarters Operation HADIN KAI assured the public that ongoing search and rescue operations will continue with unwavering resolve until every abducted person is accounted for and safely reunited with their families.
“The Theatre Command also issues a stern warning to individuals involved in supplying food, fuel, construction materials, transportation or any other form of logistics to terrorist groups to immediately desist. Anyone found aiding, abetting or collaborating with terrorist elements, directly or indirectly, will be identified, apprehended and prosecuted in accordance with the law.”
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