Human Rights activist and former presidential candidate of the African Action Congress (AAC), Omoyele Sowore, has dismissed the credibility of Nigeria’s current electoral technology, insisting that the country must embrace full electronic voting to guarantee transparency.
Speaking in a monitored interview, Sowore criticised the Senate’s decision to approve electronic transmission of results with manual backup, describing it as a deliberate loophole to undermine electoral integrity.
“What we asked for was for electronic transmission to be made mandatory. Instead, they cleverly inserted provisions that allow manual collation, which courts will later interpret as non-mandatory,” he said.
Sowore argued that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IREV) are outdated and unreliable, noting that even if IREV works perfectly, it only displays results that may already have been manipulated at polling units.
READ ALSO: Court remands Islamic clerics over brutalisation of minors
Globacom promotes Valentine gifting with huge discounts on smartphones
Abiodun pays tribute to Mama Onabanjo, pledges support for Cathedral project
He pointed to India’s model of electronic voting, which accommodates over 900 million registered voters, as proof that Nigeria—with fewer than 100 million voters—can adopt a more advanced system.
“If you can use electronic systems to send money and conduct confidential transactions, why can’t we vote electronically? With electronic voting, you get a digital ballot, a receipt, and proof of your vote. That is the global standard,” Sowore stressed.
He dismissed claims that poor network coverage in some states makes electronic transmission impractical, arguing that technology solutions such as satellite internet could easily be deployed.
Sowore further accused political elites of resisting transparency because “90 per cent of them would not survive in a truly open electoral process.”
On Nigeria’s refineries, Sowore described ongoing rehabilitation projects as fraudulent, alleging that government deliberately allowed refineries to collapse to enable fuel importation and profiteering. He contrasted this with the support given to Dangote’s refinery project, which he said received massive state backing while public refineries were left to rot.
“They had no intention of fixing anything. The intention was to defraud the country. We should not be debating whether refineries are open or not; we should be seeing people in handcuffs explaining where the money went,” he declared.