Legal Experts, Catholic Church Push Tinubu on Electoral Reforms Amid Transparency Concerns
Senior legal practitioners and religious leaders are intensifying calls for comprehensive electoral reforms, urging President Bola Tinubu to implement long-delayed recommendations including establishing electoral offences tribunals and mandating electronic transmission of election results.
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Nigeria's electoral system faces renewed scrutiny as prominent legal experts and the Catholic Church mount pressure on President Bola Tinubu's administration to implement comprehensive reforms aimed at addressing transparency deficits that have undermined voter confidence in recent elections.
Legal luminary Chief Olisa Agbakoba (SAN) has called on President Tinubu to establish an electoral offences tribunal, a key recommendation from the 2008 Justice Muhammadu Uwais Electoral Reform Committee that has remained unimplemented for nearly two decades. According to The Nation Newspaper, Agbakoba made the appeal while commending the president's recent Executive Order 9, suggesting the administration has demonstrated capacity for institutional reform.
The Uwais Report, commissioned following the widely criticized 2007 general elections, proposed sweeping changes to Nigeria's electoral architecture including the creation of specialized tribunals to prosecute electoral offences, restructuring of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), and enhanced transparency mechanisms. Despite broad consensus on its recommendations among civil society and legal practitioners, successive administrations have failed to implement its core provisions.
Catholic Bishops Demand Electronic Transmission Safeguards
The Catholic Bishops Conference of Nigeria has added its voice to reform demands, specifically calling for mandatory real-time transmission of election results from polling units to collation centres. According to Peoples Gazette, the bishops are demanding that results transmitted via the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and uploaded to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) be made legally binding to prevent manipulation during manual collation processes.
The church's intervention comes amid persistent complaints about discrepancies between results transmitted electronically from polling units and final figures announced at collation centres during the 2023 general elections. Electoral observers from multiple organizations documented instances where results uploaded to IReV differed significantly from those declared at state and national collation centres, fueling litigation that reached the Supreme Court.
"The Catholic bishops demanded mandatory real-time transmission of results from polling units to collation centres via BVAS and IReV to restore voter confidence," the Peoples Gazette reported, highlighting concerns that current regulations allow manual alteration of electronically transmitted results.
Broader Context of Electoral Credibility Crisis
These reform demands emerge against the backdrop of declining public confidence in Nigeria's electoral processes. The 2023 elections saw voter turnout drop to approximately 29 percent, the lowest in the country's democratic history since 1999, according to INEC's official figures. Legal challenges to presidential and gubernatorial results have become routine, with opposition parties citing systematic irregularities in result collation and transmission.
The Electronic Transmission of Results controversy has particular resonance following the 2021 Electoral Act amendment process, during which the National Assembly initially resisted provisions for mandatory electronic transmission before eventually including conditional clauses. Civil society organizations argued these conditions created loopholes that undermined the technology's transparency benefits.
Agbakoba's specific reference to Executive Order 9 in his appeal to President Tinubu suggests strategic timing, as the order demonstrated presidential willingness to use executive authority for institutional reforms. The senior advocate has been a consistent voice for electoral reform, having served on various committees examining Nigeria's democratic infrastructure.
Implementation Challenges and Political Will
The persistent failure to implement the Uwais Report recommendations reflects broader challenges in Nigeria's reform agenda, where political resistance often stalls technical improvements to electoral systems. Establishing electoral offences tribunals would require legislative action, potentially facing opposition from lawmakers who benefit from current enforcement gaps.
Similarly, making electronically transmitted results legally binding would require amendments to the Electoral Act, necessitating National Assembly approval. Previous attempts to strengthen electronic transmission provisions faced resistance from legislators citing infrastructure constraints in rural areas, though critics argued these objections masked concerns about reduced opportunities for result manipulation.
The Catholic Church's intervention carries particular weight given its institutional presence across Nigeria's 36 states and historical role in election observation. The church typically deploys thousands of observers during elections and has credibility as a non-partisan stakeholder in democratic processes.
As Nigeria approaches the 2027 electoral cycle, pressure for reforms is likely to intensify. Whether the Tinubu administration responds to these calls may significantly influence both the credibility of upcoming elections and broader perceptions of the government's commitment to democratic consolidation. The president has not yet publicly responded to either Agbakoba's appeal or the Catholic bishops' demands.