Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has submitted that the mixed electronic and manual transmission of election results, adopted on Tuesday by the Senate, amounted to a potential threat to the country’s electoral sanctity.
“The Senate’s mixture of manual and electronic result transmission will only breed confusion. I am calling on all opposition parties to unify against this move. We must ensure our electoral process is modernised, not complicated by outdated methods,” he said.
He spoke to newsmen at the end of a visit to retired Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, former Military President, in Minna, Niger State on Tuesday.
According to Atiku, Nigerians had anticipated a fully electronic transmission of election results at all levels.
A hybrid system could compromise the integrity of elections and create unnecessary confusion in the collation of results, he submitted.
Atiku said: “What Nigerians were expecting was electronic transmission of results across the various levels of the election.
“What we got instead was a mixture of electronic and manual transmission, which is going to cause more confusion and could jeopardise our electoral transmission system.”
He stressed that real-time electronic transmission of results remained the best option for credible elections in the country.
Atiku said his visit to Babangida was purely a customary one of paying respect to a statesman.
He dismissed speculations about his political ambitions ahead of the 2027 general elections.
“The issue of whether I will be contesting the 2027 election has not even arisen,” he said.
The former Vice President disclosed that, his party, the African Democratic Congress (ADC), was currently focused on strengthening its structures nationwide.
According to him, the ADC is working to ensure that its organisational framework is firmly rooted from the ward level, local government and state levels up to the national level.
“We are busy mobilising people and registering them at the same time,” he said.
Atiku added that the ADC constitution does not provide for zoning of political offices.
