Chidoka: 2027 election will be difficult to rig if INEC replicates Osun process
Former Aviation Minister Osita Chidoka has said Nigeria’s 2027 general election will be difficult to manipulate if the Independent National Electoral Commission conducts the polls with the same level of technological transparency witnessed during the Osun State governorship election.
Chidoka, chancellor of the independent Athena Centre think tank, said election monitoring had evolved to the point where attempts to manipulate results could be detected and independently tracked.
“The only way to rig the election in 2027 is not to conduct it,” he said on Channels Television’s Politics Today programme on Monday.
He said that if the electoral process used in Osun was replicated nationwide, civil society organisations and independent monitors would be able to collate results from polling units and wards in real time.
Chidoka said Athena Centre would deploy technology and a network of observers to track results across the country, even if electronic systems encountered difficulties.
“We need to get out of here, we need to stop this, election rigging is old,” he said, urging political leaders to abandon practices that could undermine the credibility of elections.
He said election-monitoring organisations, including YIAGA Africa, Athena Centre and Dataphyte, had already demonstrated their ability to independently collate results during the Osun poll.
According to Chidoka, the organisations were able to monitor results from polling units and wards, making it harder for anyone attempting to manipulate the outcome to operate undetected.
He praised INEC’s deployment of technology during the Osun election, saying the performance demonstrated the potential of electoral technology to strengthen transparency.
“The competition was intense, the technology worked and then the people behaved well,” he said.
Chidoka also highlighted the role of artificial intelligence in speeding up the analysis and collation of results from the INEC Result Viewing Portal.
He said AI had enabled election observers to process large volumes of results much faster than traditional manual methods.
Chidoka said the experience showed that Nigeria had made progress in the use of technology to improve electoral transparency.
He, however, stressed that the ultimate objective should be to ensure that the votes of Nigerians determine the outcome of elections.
The former minister said the country must also move away from a system in which political disputes routinely end up in court, arguing that electoral processes should be credible enough for citizens to have confidence in the results.