A former Minister of Aviation, Osita Chidoka, has said the 2027 general election would be difficult to manipulate if the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) replicates the processes and technology deployed during the recent Osun State governorship election.
Chidoka, who is Chancellor of the non-partisan Athena Centre, made the remarks on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Monday.
According to him, the only way the 2027 election could be rigged under such a transparent process would be for the election not to hold.
“The only way to rig the election in 2027 is not to conduct it,” Chidoka said.
He explained that with the current electoral technology, independent organisations could monitor and collate results from polling units and wards across the country in real time.
“If you conduct it with this process, by 7 we at Athena Centre will be giving you results state by state, how many have been uploaded and what the scores are,” he said.
Chidoka added that even if technological platforms failed during the election, civil society organisations could deploy manual systems to monitor and collate results across the country.
He argued that election rigging had become outdated and urged political leaders to abandon the practice.
“We need to get out of here, we need to stop this. Election rigging is old; it’s not something any leader does. Don’t they feel ashamed when they meet other world leaders and come with a tainted mandate? No, that has gone,” he said.
Reflecting on the Osun governorship election, Chidoka said election-monitoring organisations were able to independently collate results from polling units and wards, making it difficult for anyone to manipulate the outcome.
He cited the efforts of YIAGA Africa, Athena Centre and Dataphyte, which he said were able to monitor results as they were uploaded to INEC’s Result Viewing Portal (IReV).
“They were sitting and waiting; they didn’t know the world had moved,” Chidoka said, referring to individuals who might have intended to manipulate the election.
He added that the organisations had already begun collating results while the election was ongoing.
“YIAGA was already collating the results, Athena Centre was already collating the results, Dataphyte was already collating the results. So, we knew the numbers from every ward and every polling unit.
“And guess what, we are going to do it in the 2027 election.”
Chidoka also commended the conduct of the Osun election, describing it as evidence of Nigeria’s growing capacity to deploy technology in the electoral process.
He praised INEC for its use of technology, saying it enabled Nigerians and election observers to monitor developments in real time.
“The competition was intense, the technology worked and then the people behaved well,” he said, while noting that there had previously been instances of poor conduct by electoral officials despite the availability of technology.
According to him, one of the major highlights of the election was the role played by artificial intelligence in helping election-monitoring organisations process and aggregate results more quickly.
He explained that organisations that previously spent hours manually downloading and entering results from IReV were able to use AI to aggregate the data within minutes.
Chidoka said it was essential for the outcome of every election to reflect the will of the Nigerian people.
He also called for an end to a system in which electoral disputes routinely end up in court, stressing that elections should be decided by voters rather than judicial intervention.
