By Ehichioya Ezomon
Since whispers heralded the 2027 General Election, aftermath of the Supreme Court sealing of their last hope of reversing the outcome of the February 25, 2023, presidential ballot, Nigeria’s opposition politicians and their supporters have claimed that “Nigerians” would defeat President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) before 12 pmĀ
on January 16, 2027. Whether made glibly or with serious intent, fair-minded members of the public wonder how realistic that boast is, given that election opens officially at 8 am/8:30 am, and closes at 2 pm/2:30 pm before sorting, collation, counting and declaration of results at polling units. Except for scattered polling units with fewer number of registered voters or low voter-turnout, no election, no matter the assurances by electoral umpires, begins promptly at 8 am/8:30 am and closes at 2 pm/2:30 pm across Nigeria. Voting begins late in many polling stations, and some may extend into the night due to delays in deployment of logistics and election materials; late arrival or absence of electoral officials; malfunctioning of appliances; or violence by thugs occasioning disruption, cancellation or postponement of voting in the affected polling units.
Where will opposition members get the numbers to defeat Tinubu and the APC before 12 pm? That can happen only by rigging of the process, which they’ve vowed to resist, but are seemingly plotting to perpetrate via a proposal by the 2027 presidential candidate of Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Peter Obi. Mr Obi, ex-Anambra State governor and the 2023 candidate of the Labour Party (LP), in an interview on Arise TV, proposed an “independent transmission” plan involving setting up a parallel system with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to record, monitor, and transmit election results directly from polling units to the NDC “situation room.” Claiming it
isn’t to compete with or rival INEC that’s responsible for election management in Nigeria, Obi’s proposal supercedes prior demand by the opposition, civil society organisations (CSOs) and the media for “real-time” results transmission from polling units to the INEC Results Viewing (IReV) portal for tracking by the public. Operationally, Obi’s team will deploy an independent results-monitoring system, to track votes from every polling unit and transmit them to the NDC situation room,
giving the team its own real-time record of polling-unit results and help detect discrepancies between figures announced at polling units and those declared at other levels in the electoral process, NigerianNewsbite reported on September 10, 2026.
Ā “We must make sure that at every polling unit, the votes are counted, the votes are recorded properly, (and) the votes are transmitted properly,” Obi said. “The results will be transmitted simultaneously to the designated INEC platform and our team’s situation room,” adding that the objective “is to ensure that the figures recorded at polling units remain traceable throughout the collation process.”Ā “All we are saying is that this time around, we will make sure that in every polling unit, we must have a system that transmits to our situation room the correct results,” Obi said, urging Nigerians to take responsibility for protecting their votes “by ensuring that ballots are properly counted and your choices are reflected in the final results.”Ā Obi said there’s nothing complicated about conducting a transparent election, pointing to Ghana and other countries as examples, adding that the priority ahead of 2027 should be to “build an electoral system in which every vote is properly counted, recorded and protected.”Ā Media reports note that the Obi plan involves results transmission to the IReV portal, while simultaneously being sent to an independent platform monitored by the NDC team and the public, with “the initiative designed to serve as an independent audit trail, ensuring that votes are accurately counted, recorded on official sheets at the polling units, and protected against alterations before official collation.” (Instagram-ARISE News).
While Sen. Victor Umeh (NDC, Anambra Central)
clarifies that the setup “is for independent verification and collation rather than a parallel result declaration system,” and Human Rights Writers Association (HURIWA) “backs the move 100%, as a boost for electoral transparency,” INEC warns against “unauthorised private result collation and parallel public announcements that can create confusion.” The “creation of confusion” during election is what proponents of independent transmission of results want through private result collation and parallel public announcements primed for when many registered voters aren’t yet accredited to cast their ballots.
To understand how the 2027 poll will be rigged by the advocates of “independent transmission of results to situation rooms,” and “real-time transmission of results to the IReV” is to remember how the same agitators and their field agents allegedly rigged polling unit votes at the 2023 presidential poll, to secure victories for Obi in the South-East, and elsewhere, such as in the South-West. Two polling units’ results stand out as a common reference for rigged votes recorded in Form EC8As that went viral on social media: one in Abia State and the other in Lagos State, respectively, used as a guide to expose the electoral fraud shielded by those who protested the most over the February 2023 poll.
In the result sheet in the South-East, at Amuzu Hall, Amuzu, Ohiaukwu I in Umuahia South, one Okeke Cynthia acted as both the Presiding Officer, and “Polling Agent” for six political parties, including the ADC credited with 1 (vote), APC 2, APGA 2, LP 218, PDP 12, and ZLP 1 vote, totaling 236 votes.Ā In a different format, the scores recorded for six parties in Form EC8A in the South-West, at Ademola Oluwole Junction I, Egbeda/Alimosho, Alimosho, Lagos, were mutilated, to increase APC’s score from 12 to 36 votes, reduce LP’s votes from 69 to 41, and PDP score from 54 to 6, as the ADC, ADP and NRM retained their 1 vote each, bringing the “total valid votes” to 86.Ā
While one Shobowale Tolani as the “Presiding Officer,” recorded the “votes cast” and signed the Form EC8A, three different signatures were appended against the scores for the APC, LP and PDP. But a closer look reveals that the same ink was applied to record all relevant and mutilated poll figures and signatures by Tolani, and the three “Polling Agents” that signed the Form EC8A on behalf of the APC, LP and PDP, accordingly.Ā
Why mutilate the results sheet, Form EC8A, with the supposed connivance of the APC, which increased its score from 12 to ONLY 36, reduced LP’s votes from 69 to 41, and PDP’s votes from 54 to 6, and allowed the LP to win the polling unit?Ā Ā
The Form EC8As from the South-East and South-West were undoubtedly the product of electoral fraud, indicating that the votes were allocated ā rather than reflecting the figures validly and lawfully cast ā to favour the LP in the Abia polling unit that’s “neatly and perfectly rigged with no alterations and cancellations,” and in the Lagos polling unit that’s “untidily manipulated!”
The foreboding is that the Form EC8As from those fraudulent polling units were scanned and transmitted through the Biomodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) machines to the IReV portal in “real-time” or delayed time, and accepted as votes “freely, fairly and transparently cast.”
It’s no surprise that on social media, the LP supporters credited Obi with massive votes across Nigeria’s six geopolitical zones, with some posters “awarding” him 55m votes ā about 59% of the 93,469,008 registered voters.
Ā Whereas 25,286,616 voters were accredited, 24,965,218 votes cast, and 24,025,940 valid votes cast, with INEC declaring Tinubu as winner with 8.7m votes, Atiku with 6.9m votes, and Obi with 6.1m votes, Obi claimed he won the poll, but that Tinubu, the APC and INEC connived to “steal his mandate.”Ā Obi and his supporters also alleged that he’s robbed of victory due to delays in “transmission” of the poll results to the IReV; that a substantial number of the uploaded results was illegible; and that INEC’s reported “technical glitch” in its servers was “contrived” to favour APC’s candidate, now President Tinubu.
Could this explain the reported “millions of failed attempts” in 2023 to hack into, and manipulate the INEC digital systems, including the IReV portal, where poll results were uploaded for members of the public to access; and the insistence by the opposition, CSOs and the media that “real-time transmission of results to the IReV” be expressly codified in the 2026 Electoral Act that Tinubu assented to on Thursday, February 19, 2026?Ā
Imagine a scenario, during the 2027 election, in which Obi and the NDC are granted, or gained access to “independently” transmit polling unit results to their “situation room” in parallel with INEC’s transmission of results to the IReV portal; and the boast by the opposition that “Nigerians will defeat Tinubu and the APC before 12 pm on January 16, 2027!”Ā Most probably, the NDC “situation room” (and perhaps other parties’ “situation rooms”) will announce unofficially-verified results, and declare Obi as leading by unassailable margin or that he’s outrightly won the franchise when there’re about two or two and half hours before poll closes, and the votes sorted, collated, counted and declared at the over 176,000 polling units across Nigeria.Ā
The Presiding Officers will then scan and transmit the results to the IReV portal, and manual collation will proceed from the ward to local government to state collation centres, and to the national collation centre for the final collation and declaration of the overall results.
The alleged manipulation of the 2023 presidential poll will be a child’s play compared to the feared unbridled rigging of the 2027 ballot. As starkly shown in 2023, only
Peter Obi of the LP was able to secure block votes from his South-East zone, and there’s a likelihood he’ll repeat that feat by alleged rigging “before 12 pm” on Election Day in January 2027!
And the results therefrom will be “independently transmitted to the NDC situation room” and announced to the world that Obi has won the election ā not from a free, fair, credible and transparent voting, but fraudulent rigging at the polling units.
Only a timely halt to Obi and the NDC “independent transmission of the poll results” can avert “anarchy” during and after the 2027 General Election, and save Nigeria from politicians who want to remove President Tinubu and the APC from power even if “Nigerians” freely, fairly, and transparently re-elect them!
ā¢Ā Mr Ezomon, Journalist and Media Consultant, writes from Lagos. He can be reached on X, Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp @EhichioyaEzomon. Tel: 08033078357.
