OPEN LETTER TO NIGERIANS…Re: Compulsory Instant Electronic Transmission of Election Results in Nigeria: A Systems Engineering, Legal-Risk, and Democratic Equity Analysis.
By Victor Okebunmi
Many Nigerians calling for compulsory instant electronic transmission of election results are doing so from a good place. The concern is about fairness, transparency, and restoring trust in elections. Those concerns are real and deserve respect. People want a system where results cannot be manipulated and where citizens can clearly and quickly see outcomes. However, good intentions do not automatically produce good system design. When you look at this issue from the perspectives of infrastructure, cybersecurity, law, and risk management, making instant transmission compulsory, especially if failure results in nullification, creates serious structural dangers that could harm the very democracy it is meant to protect.
In technology, especially in large distributed systems, there is a principle known as the CAP theorem. In simple terms, it means you cannot guarantee everything works perfectly at the same time when systems are spread across many locations. In a country like Nigeria, with over 176,000 polling units scattered across cities, villages, creeks, forests, mountains, and border areas, network failure is not a possibility; it is a certainty. Some places have strong telecom coverage. Many do not. Even in Lagos and Abuja, networks fail. Signals drop. Power goes out. Now imagine making “instant transmission” a legal requirement. The moment you do that, a network problem becomes a legal problem. A weak signal becomes a court case. A delayed upload becomes grounds for nullification. That is a dangerous way to design a national electoral system.
Once the law ties legality to transmission speed, election petitions will change direction. Instead of arguing about whether votes were counted correctly, lawyers will start arguing about timestamps. Courts will be forced to decide whether a delay was acceptable. Judges will end up discussing network latency, server downtime, signal strength, and upload logs. These are technical issues. They are not proof of fraud. But once written into law as compulsory, they become legal weapons. That shifts elections from voter intent to technical performance. That is not healthy for democracy.
There is another serious issue: incentives. If results that are not transmitted instantly can be nullified, political actors no longer need to change votes. They only need to disrupt transmission. Think about it carefully. Telecom masts can be vandalised. Fibre cables can be cut. Signal jammers can be used. Power supply can be interrupted. Servers can be attacked with denial-of-service attacks. Devices can be infected with malware. SIM cards of field officers can be compromised. In cybersecurity, this is called an availability attack. When availability determines legality, disruption becomes a strategy. Instead of persuading voters, someone only needs to create a network failure in an opponent’s stronghold. That is a dangerous incentive structure.
When we look at other countries often mentioned in this debate, things are more nuanced. Brazil uses electronic voting and fast transmission, but that system has been built and refined for more than twenty years with heavy investment and audit safeguards. Even there, political disputes still happen, and transmission timing is not automatically grounds for nullification. India uses electronic voting machines and paper audit trails, but it does not depend on compulsory instant internet transmission from every polling unit. Machines are transported physically to counting centres. Redundancy is prioritised over speed. Ghana still relies on physical result sheets as the legally binding documents, while digital tools only support transparency. The United Kingdom counts votes manually and does not rely on instant electronic uploads. In all these countries, legitimacy is built on reliability and auditability, not speed alone.
Now, let us talk about something very important but often ignored, the digital divide. In Nigeria, the areas with the highest voter turnout are often rural communities, farming areas, riverine regions, and areas with weak telecom infrastructure. Meanwhile, urban centres usually have stronger connectivity but sometimes lower turnout percentages. If instant transmission becomes compulsory and legally binding, polling units in rural areas become vulnerable. If their upload fails due to a weak signal, those votes could be challenged. Urban areas, with better network coverage, become structurally safer. That creates a serious equity problem. Could a rule meant to improve transparency end up disenfranchising high-turnout rural communities? It is a fair question. We must also ask another uncomfortable question: if political actors know where the highest votes usually come from, that those areas lack a strong communication infrastructure, and that failure to transmit instantly can lead to nullification, does that not create a strategic opportunity to challenge or undermine those votes? Even if nobody openly admits such intentions, good system design must assume adversarial behaviour. In cybersecurity, if something can be exploited, eventually someone will exploit it.
There is also the cybersecurity dimension. A compulsory instant transmission system would become one of the most attractive targets in the country. It could be targeted by domestic actors or even foreign interests. Attacks could include denial-of-service attacks to overwhelm servers, DNS manipulation, insider compromise, credential theft, endpoint malware, or simply overloading the system when thousands of polling units try to upload at once. In banking systems, if a platform works 98% of the time, that is considered strong performance. But elections are not banking apps. A 2% failure in an election can trigger a national crisis. Elections are sovereign events. They cannot depend on systems that routinely experience downtime without consequence.
Recently, some have suggested that artificial intelligence could solve all these problems, that someone could build an AI platform to capture and transmit results seamlessly. That kind of claim shows a misunderstanding of what AI actually does. AI does not create network coverage where there is none. It does not generate electricity in off-grid polling units. It does not stop fibre cuts or prevent jamming. AI can help analyse data, detect patterns, or flag anomalies once data has already been collected and transmitted. But it cannot fix physical infrastructure problems. The core issue in compulsory instant transmission is not a lack of intelligence in software. It is network reliability, power supply, hardware security, endpoint protection, and legal design. Treating AI as a magic solution to structural infrastructure and constitutional challenges is unrealistic. Serious national systems cannot be built on hype. They require redundancy, hardened networks, layered security, backup systems, and rigorous stress testing.
It must also be said that opposition parties jumping on this bandwagon may see it as a political opportunity rather than a technical reform. In a climate where coalitions are faltering or weakening, it is tempting to weaponise any issue that can create leverage. There is a risk that some actors may push loudly for compulsory instant transmission not because they have resolved the infrastructure concerns outlined above, but because they see a legal pathway to challenge and cancel results after enormous resources have already been deployed by the electoral body using taxpayers’ money. The hue and cry often ignores the engineering, security, and equity implications discussed earlier. Movements framed as “occupy this” or “occupy that” can become mobilisation tactics designed to rebuild political strength rather than strengthen systems. The concerns about infrastructure gaps, sabotage risks, and rural disenfranchisement are not hidden; they are obvious to anyone who studies the matter seriously. Yet, in a highly competitive political environment, there is always the temptation to push reforms that may later serve as grounds to invalidate outcomes if victory proves difficult. That possibility must be acknowledged, not out of hostility, but out of prudence.
Supporters of compulsory instant transmission argue that it increases transparency. Transparency is important, but it does not require instantaneity. Results are presently publicly posted at polling units. Scanned copies can be uploaded within a reasonable time window. Observers can have access. Open audit portals can be created. Transparency can exist without making milliseconds legally decisive. Others argue that digital transmission prevents manipulation during physical collation. That concern is understandable. However, digital systems introduce new risks: software bugs, insider manipulation, configuration errors, and centralised vulnerabilities. Replacing one set of risks with another, potentially larger, set of risks is not reform; it is risk transfer. Another argument is that technology removes human interference. Technology reduces some human risks, yes, but it introduces technical fragility. Networks fail. Servers crash. Data centres experience outages. Telecom systems collapse under pressure. In everyday transactions, that is inconvenient. During a presidential election, it can become destabilising.
A more sensible approach would be to require transmission but not make it mandatory, or failure automatically nullifying. If a polling unit cannot upload immediately due to network issues, it should trigger an administrative review, not an immediate invalidation. The country should invest over several years in stronger infrastructure, including satellite backup, independent power systems, and secure communication channels. Physical result sheets should remain the primary legal documents, while digital uploads serve as transparency enhancements. Pilot programmes should be tested in limited areas before nationwide enforcement.
The desire for credible elections is legitimate. But when you examine compulsory instant transmission through the lenses of infrastructure reality, cybersecurity risk, legal consequences, and electoral equity, it becomes clear that making it legally compulsory at this stage is structurally risky. A system that equates technical delay with electoral invalidity creates incentives for sabotage, increases litigation vulnerability, centralises cyber risk, and may disproportionately affect high-turnout rural communities. Reform should prioritise resilience over speed, redundancy over immediacy, and fairness over infrastructure advantage. Transparency should strengthen democracy but not unintentionally create new pathways for destabilisation or disenfranchisement.
Hon Victor Okebunmi is Senior Special Assistant (Publicity)
Renewed Hope Global.
