Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has called for urgent electoral and judicial reforms, warning that democracy in Nigeria is at risk if the judiciary continues to determine electoral outcomes, instead of voters.
In a statement on Thursday, Atiku said while he welcomed the massive turnout of Nigerians for the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration, the same enthusiasm was not translating to high voter participation during elections.
“At the 2023 elections, only 24.9 million Nigerians, representing 26.72 per cent of the 93.47 million registered voters, cast their ballots,” he said. “This is the lowest voter turnout since the return of democracy in 1999.”
Atiku stressed that reversing the decline in voter confidence required a review of key provisions of the Electoral Act.
His message was simple yet urgent: if Nigerians keep relying on courtroom verdicts to settle election results, our democracy could start to unravel.
He opened his statement on Thursday with a bright spot. He was genuinely pleased to see huge crowds turning out for the ongoing Continuous Voter Registration. But then he paused and pointed out the troubling reality that follows: those crowds aren’t showing up on Election Day.
Atiku shared a stark figure to drive the point home. In the 2023 elections, just 24.9 million Nigerians actually voted. That sounds like a lot until you remember that there were 93.47 million registered voters. In other words, only about 26.72 percent of eligible voters bothered to cast a ballot. It’s the lowest turnout we’ve seen since democracy returned in 1999, and it tells a painful story about trust—or the lack of it—in our election system.
So how do we win back that trust? For Atiku, it starts with tightening up the Electoral Act. He wants to make certain tools absolutely mandatory, not optional. First on his list is the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, or BVAS, along with the electronic transmission of results. If those two steps are locked in at every level, he believes there’ll be no wiggle room for the old-school manual tricks that erode confidence.
He was even more direct about the next part: every vote count should be anchored to the numbers that get uploaded to INEC’s Results Viewing Portal, not to tally sheets shuffled around by hand.
Atiku’s reform ideas don’t stop there. He thinks the leadership of INEC itself shouldn’t be chosen by one person in Aso Rock. Instead, he proposes a voting system that spreads that power around, making the process—and the result—far more credible.
He also has a fresh take on how election disputes are handled. In his view, INEC should shoulder the burden of proof in court, showing that they followed the rules, instead of forcing losing candidates to do the heavy lifting.
To underscore the danger of letting judges shape political destinies, Atiku quoted legal scholar Prof. Chidi Odinkalu. In Odinkalu’s book, “The Selectorate: When Judges Topple the People,” he warns that democracy withers when courtroom decisions replace the ballot box. Atiku couldn’t agree more—and neither, I imagine, could millions of Nigerians who’ve watched election victories flip in courtrooms long after the polls closed.
Ultimately, Atiku’s plea was heartfelt and clear. Nigeria’s voters must be able to choose their leaders freely on Election Day, without worrying that their decision will be overturned in a legal battle they barely understand. Only then, he believes, will the country’s democracy feel truly alive again.
