Reported by: Ijeoma G | Edited by: Oravbiere Osayomore Promise.
A fresh row has erupted over the integrity of Nigeria’s 2027 elections after a former INEC Commissioner raised an alarm that the newly signed Electoral Act 2026 contains a “dangerous” clause allowing presiding officers to count unmarked ballot papers. But almost immediately, the claim was challenged by a presidential aide, who accused the former official of spreading misinformation and called for a retraction. The spat has widened the already deep gulf between the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and opposition figures who see the law as a weapon for manipulating future polls.
Temitope Ajayi, the Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity to President Bola Tinubu, lambasted Mr Igini in a strongly worded post on X on Monday, charging that the former INEC official was deliberately misleading the public. “The claim that the 2026 Electoral Act introduces a new provision allowing presiding officers to accept ballot papers without official marks is FALSE,” Mr Ajayi wrote. “It is either that Mr Igini does not understand the law or he is deliberately seeking to cause confusion. The provision he cites existed in the 2022 Electoral Act which governed the 2023 elections. Any suggestion that this is a new Trojan horse placed in the law by the Tinubu administration is a blatant lie.”
The controversy traces back to an interview Mr Igini gave on Arise TV last week. During the interview, he warned that Section 63 of the Electoral Act 2026 has dangerously reintroduced a provision allowing ballot papers without official security features to be accepted. “The presiding officer has now been given the discretion to accept a ballot paper notwithstanding the absence of the official mark,” Mr Igini said. “What that means is that before this election, politicians who now have access to the security features of INEC ballots are going to produce their ballot papers, and that has to be accepted. This is dangerous.”
But a swift fact-check by TheCable appears to undermine the former commissioner’s core assertion. In a detailed verification, the newspaper found that “a review and comparison of section 63 of the Electoral Act 2022 shows that the exact provision was carried over to the new law” and that there is no evidence the clause was removed in 2022 or newly introduced in a later amendment. The only difference, TheCable noted, is that the 2022 version used “if” to introduce the provision, while the 2026 version uses “where.”
However, Mr Igini argued that the decision to retain the clause is precisely the problem. In subsequent statements, he noted that the wording brings back the word “satisfied,” which he says creates an unacceptably subjective test. “What is the objective condition to determine what satisfies a presiding officer?” Igini asked. “This provision was in the 2010 Act. It took us nearly 12 years to remove it. And now they have quietly brought it back.”
Beyond the debate over the ballot paper clause, Mr Igini has also raised concerns about Sections 137 and 138 of the Electoral Act. Section 138, he warns, effectively shields electoral officers who violate INEC directives but not the explicit wording of the law from being penalised in an election petition. Section 137, he says, removes the requirement to join presiding and returning officers as parties in an election petition, making it harder to hold individual officials accountable. “If you do not join the officer who actually committed the wrong, how do you prove the case?” Igini asked during his TV appearance.
The African Democratic Congress (ADC) immediately backed Igini’s position. The party’s spokesman, Bolaji Abdullahi, told the Peoples Gazette that the electoral law “gives weird discretionary powers to electoral officers,” and is “determined to achieve one thing, that is to provide a legal framework that will provide a ground for rigging elections.” This support aligns the ADC squarely with the claim that the law is tilted in favour of the ruling party.
However, Mr Ajayi dismissed the entire opposition narrative as a manufactured crisis. “Anyone who is interested in the truth can go and read Section 63 of the Electoral Act 2022 and Section 63 of the Electoral Act 2026,” Mr Ajayi wrote in another post. “They are practically identical. Those shouting today are the same voices that were silent when the 2022 Act was in force. It is hypocrisy.”
The public exchange between the presidential aide and the former INEC official has deepened the political toxicity surrounding the 2027 election preparations. The opposition, which recently resolved to field a single candidate against President Tinubu, sees the electoral law as a critical battleground. Igini’s intervention at the opposition summit in Ibadan last weekend, where he called for a united front to demand amendments, underscores the high stakes. “The 2027 election is the hill on which Nigeria’s democracy will live or die,” Igini said at the gathering. “We cannot afford to sleepwalk into disaster.”
For the Tinubu administration, quickly dismissing Igini’s claims as false and misleading may not be enough to quell public anxiety. The controversy has already galvanised civil society, with groups like the Centre for Democracy and Development (CDD) raising separate alarms over the Senate’s handling of the electoral bill. With the 2027 polls now less than a year away, every debate over the credibility of the process is a live wire. The truth, as TheCable’s fact-check suggests, is that the contentious ballot clause is not new. But the political context in which it is being litigated is.
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