{"id":17514,"date":"2025-10-06T08:27:39","date_gmt":"2025-10-06T08:27:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/?p=17514"},"modified":"2025-10-06T08:31:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-06T08:31:12","slug":"saving-democracy-the-urgency-of-electoral-reforms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/2025\/10\/06\/saving-democracy-the-urgency-of-electoral-reforms\/","title":{"rendered":"Saving Democracy: The Urgency Of Electoral Reforms"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dakuku Peterside, PhD.<\/a><\/b><\/p>\n

Voter turnout is democracy\u2019s vital sign, and ours has been fading. Since 2007, participa\u00adtion has fallen from 57% to 26.7% in 2023\u2014our lowest since the return to civilian rule. Out of 93.47 mil\u00adlion registered voters, only 24.9 million cast their votes. These are not just sta\u00adtistics; they are signals from the body politic that something is profoundly wrong. The urgency of the situation cannot be overstated. People are tired\u2014of politics as theatre and out\u00adcomes that feel predetermined. They doubt that the ballot still shapes the course of their lives. The election of 2027 will therefore be more than a date; it will be a test of whether Nigeria still believes in itself. Election credibility is the most acceptable test for democracy.<\/p>\n

What makes this moment urgent is not only the numbers but the psy\u00adchology behind them. When citizens suspect that laws are ambiguous, that results may not be transparent, that offenders go unpunished, and that security agencies appear uneven or partisan, they withdraw their trust. The economy\u2019s difficulties deepen the malaise, but the core wound is insti\u00adtutional: trust has thinned. In coun\u00adtries where participation approaches 80%, citizens believe that rules are clear, processes are transparent, and accountability is effective. Our gap is not merely comparative; it is structur\u00adal. And when over a third of registered voters stay home, the silence fills with rumour, cynicism, and agitation. That vacuum is dangerous. It breeds nar\u00adratives of exclusion, fuels separatist impulses, and weakens the legitimacy of every public decision made after\u00adwards.<\/p>\n

When over a third of Nigerian registered voters choose to stay home on election day , and most express dis\u00adtrust and dissatisfaction with the elec\u00adtoral process, it creates a dangerous pathway to instability and the erosion of democracy. This loss of confidence and widespread apathy not only dis\u00adillusions citizens about elections as a legitimate form of expression but also drives many away from democ\u00adracy itself, fuelling ethnic separatist agitation and cries of marginalisation and oppression.<\/p>\n

The recent European Union fol\u00adlow-up mission did not tell us anything we did not already know; it simply held up a sharper mirror. Their 2023 Election Observation Mission made 23 recommendations; INEC\u2019s own post-election review identified 142 in\u00adternal improvements. Yet, only eight of the EU recommendations were directly addressed to INEC, and just one of those was flagged as a priority. Most of what must change lies beyond the commission\u2014in the hands of the legislature, the executive, and the Ju\u00addiciary. That is the first truth to accept: INEC cannot rescue our democracy on its own. The second truth is more immediate and symbolic: the appoint\u00adment of the INEC Chair is the first test of our seriousness to have a credible elections . Handle it with transparency and merit, and the public will lean in; politicise it and we will have drained confidence before the starter\u2019s pistol fires.<\/p>\n

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Mahmood<\/strong><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We should not comfort ourselves that things always right themselves. Elsewhere, the cost of electoral opacity is written in grief and dis\u00adplacement. C\u00f4te d\u2019Ivoire\u2019s disputed 2010\u20132011 polls spiralled into violence, with thousands dead and hundreds of thousands uprooted. Venezuela shows what happens when manip\u00adulation hardens into a permanent crisis; it hollows the centre and rad\u00adicalises the margins. Pakistan\u2019s re\u00adcurrent controversies normalised a tense duet between civilian rule and military power. Zimbabwe\u2019s repeated taint culminated in a military-assisted transition. No country is a perfect ana\u00adlogue, but the pattern is clear enough: when laws are elastic, results opaque, offences unpunished, and institutions politicised, politics leaks from ballot boxes into streets and barracks. We know this road. We should choose another.<\/p>\n

The roots of our legitimacy gap are not mysterious. Our laws still harbour ambiguities that invite litigation and contradictory interpretations. Results management does not yet feel like a public window; when officials can see what citizens cannot, suspicion grows. Offences too often meet soft landings, and impunity breeds repetition. Se\u00adcurity services, whether through real misconduct or perceived bias, cast long shadows on tight race days. Media and civic space feel pressured precisely when we need their light most. Women continue to face barri\u00aders along the candidacy and leader\u00adship ladder. And the everyday voter\u2019s experience\u2014queues without shade, materials arriving late, inaccessible locations, poor information\u2014too of\u00adten tells first-timers and persons with disabilities that their presence is an af\u00adterthought. None of this is inevitable. All of it is fixable if we treat 2027 as a deadline, not a decorative aspiration.<\/p>\n

The needed changes are both sim\u00adple and complex. The law must be clear\u2014no more flexible deadlines, unclear rules, or phrases that mean different things in court and during vote counting. INEC appointments should be made transparently, based on merit, and protected from political manipulation . Electoral crimes need quick, clear penalties and deadlines. Inclusion must be real and written into law so women can fully take part throughout the election process. In\u00adstitutions should work together with a public security neutrality agree\u00adment, proper training, and indepen\u00addent oversight that shares its findings openly. Election results must be pub\u00adlished in real time with transparent, auditable data anyone can check. Lo\u00adgistics should plan for risks like pow\u00ader outages, connectivity issues, and bad weather. Voter registration and transfers must be easy for young peo\u00adple, mobile workers, and people with disabilities. Technology must be open, independently audited, tested public\u00adly, protected against cyberattacks and fake news, with dashboards showing system status and problems. This comprehensive reform can change our elections and give hope for a bet\u00adter future.<\/p>\n

The timing matters as much as the content. If we compress the legal work into the eve of elections, we will force administrators to improvise, and im\u00adprovisation is the enemy of credibility. The next four quarters could map a cleaner path: pass core amendments and publish an appointment frame\u00adwork now; approve budgets early so that systems can be built, tested, and audited through 2026; train security agencies to doctrine and run nation\u00adwide simulations that expose weak joints before they snap; clean the voter roll and invite the public to check their details; accredit observers and open the doors to international missions; brief the media in plain language and put contingency plans on the ta\u00adble where every citizen can see them. Nothing in that sequence is exotic; it is simply the work of a state that intends to be believed.<\/p>\n

Responsibility is widely shared, and clarity helps. The National As\u00adsembly writes and passes the amend\u00adments, funds the changes, and mon\u00aditors execution without smothering it. The Presidency assents promptly, guarantees resources, and ensures neutrality across the security architec\u00adture. INEC makes the process legible and dignified for citizens, publishes performance data, and addresses issues revealed by audits. Security agencies train to standards and pub\u00adlish their performance against them, including disciplinary actions when they fall short. The Judiciary sustains clear, expedited timelines for disputes and resists jurisprudential whiplash that turns law into a lottery. Parties practise internal democracy and fo\u00adcus on issues more than incantations. Media and civil society expand voter education, conduct real-time fact-checks, and provide parallel oversight without inflaming tensions. Citizens, companies, and the tech community pitch in\u2014volunteering, building open-source tools, lending logistics support, and funding civic education. A cred\u00adible election is not the triumph of a single institution; it is the alignment of many.<\/p>\n

Objections will come. Reforms are complex, and time is short. True\u2014but that argues for a minimum viable re\u00adform set now, with a commitment to refine after 2027 rather than freezing progress for want of perfection. Some will say that technology has already failed us; in truth, governance has been unable to keep up with technol\u00adogy. With open audits, redundancy, and law-mandated transparency, the same tools become public windows, not private worries.<\/p>\n

We still have time, though not as much as we think. Every month without legal clarity, credible ap\u00adpointments, transparent systems, professional security, and enforced accountability adds layers of cynicism that are hard to peel back. But every visible, concrete step in the opposite direction\u2014an open appointment, an audited system, a prosecuted offence, a respectful polling experience\u2014re\u00adbuilds trust in increments. In difficult times, credible elections are not a lux\u00adury; they are scaffolding. Ballots must not only be cast; they must be believed. That belief is built now, in the choices we make and the discipline we show.<\/p>\n

Our path from peril to possibility runs through the National Assembly and courtrooms, through command rooms and classrooms, through news\u00adrooms and town squares, and finally through the quiet, stubborn act of queuing to vote because one still be\u00adlieves it matters. The task of leader\u00adship is to make that belief reasonable again. If we do, 2027 will be remem\u00adbered not as another low tide, but as the moment the water turned.<\/p>\n

I have spent much of my profes\u00adsional life thinking about how insti\u00adtutions behave under stress and how leadership can prevent risk from es\u00adcalating into a crisis. The struggle for electoral transparency is not adminis\u00adtrative housekeeping; it is a test of na\u00adtional steadiness. My book \u201cLeading in a Storm \u201c is about crisis leadership when uncertainty is high and trust is low. \u201cBeneath the Surface\u201d gathers essays on how policy choices ripple through society. Both works will be presented publicly\u2014Abuja on October 14th and Lagos on October 16th\u2014not as self-promotion, but as an invita\u00adtion to a broader conversation: how we turn apathy into agency and fear into resolve.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dakuku Peterside, PhD. Voter turnout is democracy\u2019s vital sign, and ours has been fading. Since 2007, participa\u00adtion has fallen<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17179,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17514","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-from-the-grassroots"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17514","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17514"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17519,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17514\/revisions\/17519"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17179"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thenewsnow.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}