In response to the Senate’s refusal to mandate the electronic transmission of election results, Nasir El-Rufai, the former governor of Kaduna State, has come out strongly against the chamber, accusing it of wanting to allow manipulation of the results after the fact.
Speaking on Trust TV, El-Rufai expressed regret that he and other opposition leaders could not go back to Nigeria sooner to physically participate in the demonstration spearheaded by Peter Obi, a presidential candidate for the African Democratic Congress (ADC).
If it had been up to El-Rufai, “I would have joined Mr. Peter Obi and other party leaders in protesting to the National Assembly to restore the real-time and mandatory transmission of results from the polling unit,” he would have said.
He argues that the best method to prevent election manipulation is to transmit results electronically, since this is where the fraud happens, not at the voting places but during the collation process.
The tampering taking place in the collation centers can only be halted in this way. In that location is where the actual rigging occurs. He emphasised that the collation centers are where rigging takes place, rather than the polling unit.
Despite the House of Representatives passing the provision for mandatory electronic transmission of results, El-Rufai bemoaned the fact that the Senate is supposedly thwarting it.
The integrity of our elections would have been enhanced by this clause. But the current administration and the ruling party don’t want it because they know they won’t be able to win the elections, he said.
“The only way they have a fighting chance is to manipulate the results after people have voted,” he continued, asserting that the ruling party has an unfair advantage if votes are altered after the fact.
Demonstrators seized the National Assembly in Abuja on Monday morning, according to Gistcon, in protest of the Senate’s decision to not require the electronic transmission of election results.
Protest leader Peter Obi demanded immediate electoral reforms to ensure fair elections in the future.