2027 Elections: CSO Warns Nigeria Is Blocking Technology To Enable Result Manipulation
When systems are weakened on purpose, democracy pays the price.
Nigeria’s Civil Society is raising the alarm that resistance to election technology is not about feasibility, but about control.
The Executive Director of the Civil Society Legislative Advocacy Centre (CISLAC), Auwal Ibrahim Musa Rafsanjani, has insisted on the urgent mainstreaming of technology into Nigeria’s Electoral Act to prevent fraud in the transmission of results.
He dismissed claims that Nigerians cannot effectively use technology for elections as “a convenient fraud”, noting that millions of citizens already rely daily on digital platforms for banking, government services, business transactions and social media, even in rural communities.
In an interview with The Cabal Newspaper, Rafsanjani warned that ongoing attempts to weaken electoral reforms, especially provisions for electronic transmission of results, amount to “electoral corruption at its foundation”.
He argued that obstructing technology keeps loopholes open for manipulation during collation and creates conditions for rigging.
“The groundwork for compromising the 2027 elections is already being laid,” he cautioned, stressing that a weak or ambiguous electoral law breeds instability, violence and crisis rather than peace and good governance.
Rafsanjani, who also heads Transparency International Nigeria and chairs the Transition Monitoring Group (TMG), urged legislators to act in the national interest, warning that any law that blocks transparency is complicit in undermining democracy.
He called on Civil Society Organisations to sustain advocacy and public pressure to expose anti-democratic manoeuvres, noting that silence guarantees failure.
According to him, Nigeria does not lack technology, what the country is witnessing is deliberate resistance to credible elections.
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