Igini to Tinubu: "Don’t Sign It" — Former REC warns against new electoral act

Former Cross River State Resident Electoral Commissioner and lawyer, Mike Igini, has urged President Bola Tinubu to withhold assent to the Electoral Act (Repeal and Re-Enactment) Bill 2026, warning that the legislation could jeopardise Nigeria’s democratic progress and undo years of reform efforts.

Igini made the appeal on Wednesday during an interview, a day after the Nigerian Senate passed the bill following heated deliberations over clause 60, which permits manual collation as a fallback to electronic transmission of election results.

“It is my indeed humble recommendation to Mr President that you are a man of history. You were a senior man to very many of us in the struggle at a time when the journey of Nigeria and the prospect of democracy was less certain,” Igini said.

“What is going to be presented before you is a recipe for chaos. It’s a recipe to undermine all that you have done when we were in the trenches. What is put before you? Please take it back. Don’t sign it.”

Reflecting on past political battles, Igini recalled the 2015 elections, when concerns about “federal might” dominated public discourse. “And also remember that, at a time when the PDP was in office and when we were in office and they were saying that there was going to be a federal might, some of us stood out to say no. In 2015, it’s going to be the might of people, not federal might, but the might of the people through the ballot that should determine what will happen. You should be a man of history,” he said.

The former electoral official, who spent over three decades advocating electoral reforms including 10 years of practical service in the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) spoke emotionally about his personal sacrifices.

“For the past two years, I have decided to switch off painfully with respect to anything to do with our country. And I put my television on Chinese station, not because I hear Chinese,” he revealed.

“Because I have spent over 30 years of my life, 10 practical years in INEC, together with other Nigerians, on how to remove the history of our election from the poetry of frustration and pain, so that we can give meaning and purpose to the ballot as the best means of the expression of the will of the people in a democracy.

“If after a decade of effort in this direction we are sent back to where we are. To now find that all that we did are now in vain. That’s why I regret. I don’t regret that I wasted my 10 years in the service of the fatherland because I would have been a dead man by now. My colleague Ikano was killed, the family wiped out because he wanted to do the right thing for our country.”

Igini maintained that mandatory real-time electronic transmission of results remains critical to strengthening transparency and restoring public trust in elections, warning that decisions taken now could shape both the credibility of future polls and the political fortunes of lawmakers ahead of the 2027 general elections. “That is the only way we can have a democracy that we are proud of. That is the only way we can build a society where there will be opportunity for all and responsibility from all,” he concluded.