The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, HURIWA, has thrown its weight behind the plan by the presidential candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress, Peter Obi, to independently track and transmit polling-unit results during the 2027 general elections.
A starement by national coordinator of the group, Comrade Emmanuel Onwubiko, said the move would provide an additional layer of scrutiny to the electoral process and make it easier to detect discrepancies between results recorded at polling units and figures eventually announced at collation centres.
The rights group made its position known in a statement on Thursday, following Obi’s disclosure during an interview on Arise TV that his campaign would establish a system to receive and monitor results from polling units as voting results are recorded.
HURIWA argued that political parties and other electoral stakeholders should not be prevented from independently documenting results, provided their activities remain within the law and do not interfere with the statutory responsibilities of the Independent National Electoral Commission.
The group said the proposed system should not be interpreted as an attempt to create a parallel electoral commission.
“INEC remains the constitutionally recognised electoral management body,” HURIWA said, stressing that this did not prevent political parties, civil society organisations and accredited observers from independently documenting the electoral process.
According to the organisation, the real test of electoral transparency is whether figures announced at collation centres can be traced to the results recorded at individual polling units.
HURIWA said independent monitoring could preserve contemporaneous evidence of results and make it more difficult for figures to be altered without detection.
The group urged INEC to engage political parties, civil society organisations, accredited observers and technology experts on how independent result-monitoring platforms could operate alongside the commission’s official transmission system.
It also called on INEC to publish clear guidelines on the use of technology, documentation of results and independent transmission by political parties and accredited stakeholders before the 2027 election.
HURIWA further demanded stronger protection and preservation of polling-unit results, arguing that such records must remain accessible for verification and possible electoral disputes.
The organisation said Nigeria had witnessed enough controversies over elections to understand the consequences of a system in which citizens could not independently reconcile polling-unit results with figures announced at higher levels of collation.
It urged political parties, CSOs, professional bodies, election observers and the media to develop lawful mechanisms for monitoring the electoral process.
Such measures, it said, could include voter education, deployment of trained polling-unit agents, photographic documentation of results where legally permitted, secure result archiving and independent monitoring of the collation process.
HURIWA, however, cautioned that independent monitoring must not obstruct electoral officials, intimidate voters or interfere with the collation process.
The rights group also called for neutrality by security agencies and impartiality by election observers, while urging the authorities to protect voters from intimidation.
It said the 2027 election should be used to establish a system in which every result can be traced from the polling unit to the final declaration.
HURIWA said Nigerians should not have to wait until the final declaration before determining whether the figures announced during the collation process correspond with results recorded at polling units.
The organisation consequently urged the Federal Government, INEC, political parties and security agencies to create an environment where lawful independent electoral monitoring could take place without intimidation or unnecessary restrictions.
Peter Obi
