Why It Will Be Difficult To Rig 2027 Election – Former Minister, Chidoka

A former Minister of Aviation, Osita Chidoka, has said it will be difficult to rig the 2027 general elections if the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) conducts them the same way as the just-concluded Osun State governorship election.

Naija News reports that Chidoka made this known on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Monday.

Chidoka, Chancellor of the non-partisan and independent think tank, the Athena Centre, said the only way the 2027 election could be rigged was if it was not conducted.

According to Chidoka, election rigging had become outdated and Nigerian leaders should abandon the practice.

He said, “The only way to rig the election in 2027 is not to conduct it.

“If you conduct it with this (Osun) process, by 7 we at Athena Centre will be giving you results state by state, how many have been uploaded and what the scores are, we will tell you that. Even if they say no technology will work that day, we will use manual system, we will put over 5,000 people on the 8,000 wards in Nigeria and be downloading it because Nigeria just needs to make a move.

“We need to get out of here, we need to stop this, election rigging is old, it’s not something any leader does. Don’t they feel ashamed when they meet other world leaders and you come with a tainted mandate? No, that has gone.” 

Chidoka recalled that some people were waiting to rig the Osun election but were unaware that the world had moved past rigging.

The former Minister said election-monitoring organisations collated results during the Osun governorship election, noting that the same could be achieved in 2027 if INEC allows the IReV platform to function as it did during the poll.

He stated, “They (those who wanted to rig) were sitting and waiting, they didn’t know the world had moved. YIAGA was already collating the results, Athena Centre was already collating the results, Dataphyte was already collating the results. So, we knew the numbers from every ward and every polling unit. And guess what, we are going to do it in the 2027 election.”

While describing the conduct of the Osun election as another example of the progress Nigeria had made in electoral technology, Chidoka commended INEC for deploying technology during the election and making it possible for Nigerians to monitor developments in real time.

He added, “The competition was intense, the technology worked and then the people behaved well. Because despite technology working well in some places, we have seen INEC officials and electoral officers behave badly.

“But what was important on Saturday was that technology was working, the people were working and the more important one which I think Nigerians should be happy about is that AI played a critical role in this election. All of us who monitor IRev spending hours trying to get people download results and entering manually. AI made it possible for us to aggregate the results in minutes.”