By Abuja, Nigeria
The dust raised from the passage of the electoral act 2022 as amended is yet to settle as a former commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Mike Igini has called on President Bola Tinubu not to sign it into law.
Igini who appeared on Arise Tv on Wednesday morning and monitored by AfrikTimes said the resistance on e-transmission is from the elites, stressing that allowing electronic transmission of election results will lead to chaos and undermine the effort of Mr President .
“It’s a recipe for chaos. It’s a recipe to undermine all that you have done while we’re in the trenches. And also remember that at the time when the PDP was in office and when we were in office and they were saying that there was going to be a federal might, so my force to that to say, no, in 2015, it’s going to be the might of people, not federal might, but the might of the people through the ballot that should determine what will happen.”
He maintained that the effort to effect electronic transmission has been on for over ten years now, right from the time of Jega at the helm of the electoral commission. He added that allowing electronic transmission is bringing back incident form which he described as an avenue for rigging.
“For 10 years, particularly from the Jega leadership up to Mahmood Yakubu, much effort went into e-transmission. There was an INEC-NCC report on electronic transmission, ready since 2018. The danger with what has been passed is that we’re bringing back the incident form, which will be an avenue for rigging. Presiding officers’ lives will be in danger in 2027 if they opt to use discretionary powers due to claimed network unavailability that differs from voters experience.”
