Nigeria's new election law makes rigging optional — and legal

Here's what Tinubu signed into law on February 18, less than 24 hours after the National Assembly passed it.

Section 60(3) of the Electoral Act 2026 now gives presiding officers the power to transmit election results manually when there is a "communication failure." Not as a last resort. Not with independent verification required. Just: if the signal is bad, write it down and drive it in yourself.

That one clause is everything.

In 2023, the central wound of that election wasn't the violence or the queues. It was the INEC Results Viewing Portal — results appearing in some places, vanishing in others, with gaps that were never properly explained. Nigerians refreshed that portal at 2am and watched numbers move in ways that didn't make sense. Courts later ruled the irregularities weren't enough to void the result. The country moved on, sort of.

This new law makes those gaps permanent infrastructure.

The opposition — ADC, NNPP, Labour Party, PDP — held a joint press conference calling the Act "anti-democratic." Peter Obi formally left Labour Party, registered with ADC in his Anambra hometown, and announced he'll challenge it in court. IPAC, the umbrella body of all registered parties, threatened to boycott the 2027 elections entirely if the law isn't amended.

Senate President Akpabio responded with something worth writing down. He said: "Each time we make a law and the opposition frowns, I get excited that we have made the right law."

He said that about an election law.

But Section 60(3) isn't even the only problem. Section 138 removed certificate forgery as a ground for challenging election results — meaning a candidate who faked their credentials can no longer be disqualified through a petition. Section 84 restricts parties to direct primaries only, removing indirect primaries. The ADC says this contradicts Supreme Court rulings on party autonomy. And INEC has now moved the 2027 presidential election to January 16, roughly a month earlier than planned, giving opposition parties less time to reorganise.

There's also a digital membership register deadline: parties must submit full registers to INEC by April 2. Smaller parties say they can't meet it. If they don't, they risk sanctions that could affect their eligibility for 2027.

Here's the uncomfortable part. Tinubu won a contested 2023 election partly because courts ruled that electronic transmission gaps weren't sufficient grounds for nullification. He now signs a law that makes those gaps legal. The same man who benefited from the ambiguity has now written the ambiguity into statute.

Former INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner Mike Igini said it plainly: this is "reverse momentum." The Electoral Act 2022 was built painstakingly to push Nigerian elections toward mandatory technology. This one turns mandatory into optional.

The question isn't whether the 2027 election will be credible. Nigerians have been asking that since 1999.

The question is whether the law itself is now the instrument. And on February 18, signed before the ink was dry on the passage vote, that question got a little easier to answer.

System Note: Three things are moving at once. The ruling party is consolidating the rules. The opposition is consolidating its resistance — ADC is absorbing Obi, Amaechi, and others. And INEC, which is meant to be independent, moved the election date to comply with a law whose legitimacy is being contested in court. All three pieces are in motion before 2027 formally begins. That's what an election setup looks like in Nigeria: not on election day, but in the quiet legislative months before anyone casts a vote.