JamzNG Latest News, Gist, Entertainment in Nigeria
Between committing fraud and resigning, millions of Nigerians face an impossible choice – choose a system they no longer trust, or stay home and remain governed by it.
Nigeria approaches 2027 with all the hustle and bustle of an election season and no hope at all. Political groups have defected and readjusted. INEC announced the schedule and discussed technology. Civil society organizations launched voter education campaigns from Lagos to Maiduguri. But on the streets, in markets, on danfos and in Diaspora WhatsApp groups, the dominant mood is not one of joy but rather a deep and weary ambivalence.
This is not apathy. Apathy shows that society doesn’t care. Nigerians really care. What they experienced was a textbook dilemma – a situation in which a choice must be made between two or more seemingly equally undesirable alternatives. For millions of people, the choice now is: participate in an electoral process they believe has been compromised, or withdraw completely and hand their future over to people they don’t trust.
This dilemma split the country into two camps. The first group were those who decided not to participate at all, due to their distrust of INEC. Their numbers are not small, and they are not standing still. In the 2023 presidential election, the Independent National Electoral Commission recorded more than 93.4 million voters, but only 24.9 million votes were cast for all candidates combined – a turnout of 27 percent, one of the lowest in Africa and the lowest in Nigeria’s history since the return of civilian rule in 1999. According to a 2024 Afrobarometer survey, only 23 percent of Nigerians said they trusted INEC “somewhat” or “a lot.” down from 47 percent in 2017. When people say they won’t vote, they don’t mean they are lazy. They pass judgment on institutions they believe have failed them.
The second group are those who will vote, but are haunted by the question of whether their vote will survive the journey from polling station to polling station. They will queue under the sun to get accreditation from BVAS, but they wonder whether violence will break up the queue before counting begins, or whether their results sheets will be rewritten at ward level after they leave. This fear is based on life experience. In the 2023 general elections, Yiaga Africa documented 101 high-profile incidents of results manipulation and intimidation in 21 states, while the Center for Democracy and Development reported armed disruption of voting in Lagos, Rivers, and Kano. Many people’s trust in the electoral system is at an all-time low. And the events that occurred in Nigeria are not a long history – this was the last election.
What systematically goes against people’s expectations in elections is not a factor, but rather a chain of complicity that Nigerians are now well aware of. The first link in the chain is vote buying, which has ceased to be a rumor and has become an open market price in a democracy. In the off-cycle gubernatorial elections in Bayelsa, Imo, and Kogi in 2023, observers from Yiaga Africa and the Nigerian Civil Society Situation Room reported that voters were openly offered between N3,000 and N15,000 per vote, and agents used mobile bank transfers to avoid cash detection. The 2022 Election Law criminalizes vote buying with a prison sentence of up to 12 months, but no serious penalties have yet been imposed. Poverty has been used as a campaign strategy. As Chinua Achebe warned in 1983 in The Trouble with Nigeria, “The Nigerian people became like this only because their leaders were not what they were supposed to be.” When a bag of rice costs N95,000 and the minimum wage is N70,000, N5,000 on election day feels like survival.
The second link is the growing belief that the judiciary, not electoral districts, is the ultimate determinant of who wins. “Going to court” has become a provocation, not a solution. After the 2023 elections, more than 1,200 petitions were filed with the electoral tribunal, challenging the presidential election to the state assembly. The Supreme Court ultimately decides the presidency, as it has in every cycle since 2007, and determines the fate of at least three governorships. Judicial intervention is constitutional and necessary, but when nearly 25 percent of all legislative seats are decided by judges and not by voters, the public begins to believe that the real campaigning happens after the vote – in the legislature, not in the communities. The late Chief Gani Fawehinmi once said, “When justice is only available to those who can afford it, then justice ceases to be justice.” That sentiment now defines election courts.
The third link in the chain is the cooperation of security forces and ballot snatchers. Nigerians no longer use the term “ballot snatching” because the methods have evolved. Now this is voter suppression in uniform. The European Union Election Observation Mission, in its final report in 2023, noted “a lack of prosecution of election violence, including that perpetrated by security personnel, and an atmosphere of impunity.” In the 2023 elections, verified videos on social media showed police officers standing idly by while thugs disrupted voting in Eti-Osa, Lagos, and in Obio-Akpor, Rivers. Elsewhere, excessive force was used to disperse legitimate voters. When the person meant to protect the ballot becomes a bystander to the theft, citizens know that showing up is risky.
The fourth link in the chain is election officials who manipulate the results. INEC introduced the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System and IReV portal to close the gap between polling units and polling centers, thereby promising real-time transmission. On February 25, 2023, that promise ran aground for the presidential election. INEC’s own explanation was a “technical error,” but for many Nigerians, the error is a symbol of distrust ahead of 2027. The problem is not just the technology – it is also the people who operate it. Former INEC Chairman Prof. Attahiru Jega publicly admitted in 2021 that “we must address election fraud within INEC itself.” Changes to Form EC8A, exchange of election results sheets between voting units, sudden inconclusive election declarations in areas controlled by opponents – these things remain part of the existing toolkit.
There is another link that is rarely mentioned but is just as powerful. There are local traditional rulers and community youth leaders who are tasked with providing block votes. There were media aides involved who created fake results on X and Facebook before INEC could announce anything, thus creating post-election confusion and anger. There are candidates who are desperate and find violence cheaper than persuasion. There are INEC ad-hoc staff, poorly paid and poorly trained, who are susceptible to the N50,000 inducement to turn away. Together they form an ecosystem that takes advantage of distrust. As Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka said, “A country that spends so much money on lies will never progress.”
Here is the version that no one dares to say out loud: Nigeria does not have a voter turnout problem. This has a trust production problem. The political class knows exactly why the public is losing trust, because they have built their careers on that loss. They know that ethnic sentiment moves faster than a manifesto, that religious divisions guarantee the formation of a base without performance, that a disillusioned and uncaring middle class will be easier to defeat than a mobilized middle class. As political groups, INEC and other stakeholders look ahead to 2027, for the vast majority of Nigerians, it remains unclear whether their participation will be guaranteed – because things that need to change are yet to be determined. They are in a culture of impunity.
The danger is that this distrust is now becoming stronger. When credible people stay at home, the business is left to those who buy votes. When the vote-buying parties win, INEC and the courts appear to legitimize them, which further convinces credible people to stay home next time. This is a vicious cycle, and breaking it will require more than just a press conference from INEC headquarters.
But history also provides other lessons, and this is where Nigerians must choose differently. The only necessary ingredient for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing. Evil does not need your voice – it only needs your absence. Vote buying will only prevail if those who cannot be bought refuse to show up. Manipulation of results only works if the polling stations are empty and there are no party officials or citizen observers ready to compare the EC8A posted on the wall with the numbers uploaded on IReV. The court only becomes decisive when the margin is small enough to steal.
Therefore, doing the right thing in 2027 means refusing to leave things to chance or to bad influencers taking advantage of your cynicism. This means organizing not only to vote, but also to defend that vote with legal presence. Stay here until your vote is counted. Take a picture of the results sheet. Get to know your voting unit agent. Join an election monitoring group like Yiaga Africa, the Situation Room, or your local civil society – because a crowded polling place is more difficult to rig than an empty one. Demand that INEC bring to justice its staff who have committed compromises and that security agencies be held accountable if they colluded. Disbelief is not the end of the story. This should be the start of vigilance.
By: Allen Durueke
