Amid election result transmission debate, INEC proposes a strange fix for vote fraud

Nigeria’s electoral umpire believes part of the country’s election problem may lie in something unexpectedly simple: the size of the voting cubicle.

At a National Assembly budget defence session on Thursday, the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Joash Amupitan, revealed that the commission plans to procure larger voting cubicles ahead of the 2026 elections. The aim, he said, is to curb vote-buying and other forms of electoral malpractice.

The idea has raised eyebrows.

INEC’s current cubicles – the small, umbrella-like structures where voters mark their ballots – are still available, so why spend money on more cubicles?” Cross River South Senator Asuquo Ekpeyong questioned.

Mr Amupitan explained that stakeholder engagements, alongside reports from international observers including the European Union and the United Kingdom, praised INEC’s conduct of recent elections but repeatedly flagged vote-buying as a serious concern. It’s the concern Nigerians have.

“One of the major concerns, even during the Anambra election, INEC did everything possible to ensure that the election was credible, and we went the extra mile. However, we cannot have a perfect election. Nonetheless, from all the reports, including the European Union report and the report from the UK, we were given very high commendations, but their report had, has to do with the issue of vote buying,” Mr Amupitan said, according to Premium Times.

According to him, INEC received the suggestion that the present cubicles are too small. Voters mark their ballots inside, then step out to drop them into the ballot box – creating an opportunity to display the ballot as proof of compliance in vote-buying arrangements.

“When we had stakeholder engagement, the essence of the stakeholder engagement is also to have something to take away from them, and the suggestions they made as to one of the measures to curb vote buying, apart from protection, is that the cubicles we’re using now are just too small,” he said.

“So, we are to expand it in such a way that the ballot boxes will also be able to accommodate it, so that you don’t need to vote and come out and drop your ballot.

“So, we’re going to have a cubicle that allows you to do your voting and put it here and there immediately. A situation where somebody will vote and come out and show it to everybody as a confirmation will no longer arise. So, for that reason, we also put our heads together to see that you vote and then you drop your ballot.”

Debate and Protests

Many Nigerians argue that the country’s most consequential election manipulation does not happen inside the cubicle. It happens after voting, during collation and results management.

That debate resurfaced this week when protests broke out in Abuja after the Senate initially declined to authorise mandatory real-time transmission of polling unit results to INEC’s public viewing portal, IReV. The Senate partially reversed course after two days of demonstrations.

The so-called IReV platform was designed to provide a digital backup of polling unit results and limit the use of fictitious figures during collation.

In the 2023 general election, INEC’s promise to deploy IReV widely was presented as a major credibility boost. However, not all results were uploaded as expected, sparking public outrage and legal challenges.

In some instances, results displayed on the portal markedly differed from those manually declared, and INEC failed to effect corrections, nonetheless.