Femi Akintunde-Johnson
There is something far more dangerous than a failed election. It is a nation that gradually becomes comfortable with failed electoral processes. The first provokes outrage; the second breeds resignation. And once a people begin to expect technical failures, procedural confusion and disputed outcomes as normal features of elections, democracy itself starts losing its moral authority.
The controversy surrounding the recent Nigerian Bar Association presidential election should concern more than lawyers. Whether the eventual winners are truly the rightful winners is, in many respects, a separate matter. What deserves wider national reflection is how a process meant to showcase professional excellence became overshadowed by complaints about technology, administration and transparency. In the end, the conversation shifted from leadership to logistics; from ideas to infrastructure; from mandate to mechanics. That is never a healthy outcome.
The NBA is not just another association. It is the body that daily interrogates constitutionalism, due process and the rule of law. If an institution populated by some of the country’s brightest legal minds could find itself struggling with confidence in its electoral process, then the rest of us should pause before dismissing the episode as an isolated professional disagreement.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect is not that glitches occurred. Technology, after all, is designed by human beings and remains susceptible to human error. Networks fail. Servers overload. Software develops unexpected vulnerabilities. Even the world’s most sophisticated digital systems occasionally stumble. The real question is different: how prepared are institutions to anticipate failure, communicate honestly when it occurs, and restore confidence through transparent corrective measures?
Too often in Nigeria, the answer is painfully familiar. We improvise before elections, apologise during elections and rationalise after elections. Somewhere in between, public confidence quietly slips away.
We have become a nation of post-event explanations. Every institutional failure arrives with a ready-made excuse. The server became overwhelmed. The network provider experienced difficulties. The portal developed unforeseen complications. Results were delayed by technical challenges. Consultants are reviewing the incident. Lessons have been learnt. Until the next time. It is almost becoming a national ritual.
The danger lies not merely in defective systems but in defective expectations. When citizens begin every election already anticipating glitches, delayed accreditation, missing names, malfunctioning portals or contradictory announcements, they unconsciously lower the standard they demand from institutions. We start celebrating elections that merely avoid catastrophe instead of insisting on processes that inspire confidence. That is a perilous place for any democracy.
Ironically, electronic elections themselves are not the problem. Around the world, they have demonstrated remarkable capacity to improve speed, accessibility and accuracy when supported by credible institutions. Estonia has spent nearly two decades refining internet voting through robust digital identity systems, independent audits and relentless public education. Brazil has invested consistently in secure electronic voting backed by extensive testing and transparent verification. India, governing the largest electorate on earth, deploys electronic voting machines supported by multiple layers of physical safeguards, randomisation procedures and cross-party scrutiny. None of these countries arrived at success through wishful thinking or glossy press releases. They built public trust patiently, one election at a time.
Technology, in other words, cannot compensate for institutional weakness. Indeed, it often exposes it.
Nigeria’s challenge has never been a shortage of brilliant engineers, software developers or election experts. Our recurring weakness lies elsewhere: an unhealthy relationship with planning and accountability. We embrace innovation without adequately stress-testing it. We announce readiness before achieving readiness. We underestimate predictable risks and overestimate our capacity to improvise solutions when difficulties emerge. Then we hope public relations will repair what preparation failed to prevent.
Unfortunately, confidence is easier to lose than to regain. That is why institutions must begin treating electoral credibility as a process rather than an event. Every electronic election should undergo rigorous independent technical audits before polling begins. Systems should be subjected to simulated attacks, heavy traffic and multiple failure scenarios long before election day. Backup mechanisms must exist for every critical stage. Independent observers should include not only lawyers and administrators but also respected cybersecurity professionals. Most importantly, institutions must communicate promptly, honestly and consistently whenever problems arise. Silence breeds rumours; delayed explanations breed suspicion.
There is another lesson here for the Independent National Electoral Commission. The NBA election is not INEC, and the scale is obviously incomparable. Yet both share one indispensable commodity: public trust. Every controversy that undermines confidence in one electronic voting process inevitably influences public perception of the next. As Nigeria inches towards another general election cycle, every institutional election conducted today becomes, in effect, a rehearsal for 2027.
INEC should therefore resist the temptation to study only its own experiences. It should carefully examine every significant electronic election conducted by professional bodies, universities, trade associations and political parties. Successes deserve replication; failures deserve forensic examination. Wise institutions learn from their own mistakes. Great institutions learn from everyone else’s as well.
The NBA, for its part, should resist defensiveness. Credible organisations are not diminished by acknowledging shortcomings; they are strengthened by confronting them openly. An independent post-election technical review, publicly released with clear recommendations and implementation timelines, would reassure members that institutional integrity matters more than institutional pride.
Beyond the legal profession lies an even bigger national lesson. Democracies do not collapse only through coups, dictatorship or constitutional vandalism. Sometimes they erode quietly, through accumulated tolerance for mediocrity. Citizens begin accepting what they once challenged. Institutions begin repeating mistakes they once promised to correct. Leaders become more adept at explaining failure than preventing it.
That quiet normalisation should worry us far more than any temporary software malfunction.
For nations, as for individuals, standards seldom collapse overnight. They decline gradually, concession after concession, excuse after excuse, glitch after glitch. Before long, what should have provoked outrage merely attracts weary shrugs and resigned laughter. “Only in Nigeria,” we say, as though national underperformance were a cultural inheritance rather than a correctable choice.
We deserve better than elections whose greatest achievement is surviving themselves. We deserve institutions that inspire confidence before, during and after every vote. Democracy is not strengthened simply because somebody wins. It is strengthened when even those who lose can honestly say the process deserved their trust.
That is why the greatest danger before us is not the occasional glitch. It is the day we stop expecting excellence altogether, and begin treating avoidable failure as another familiar feature of the Nigerian landscape. The day glitches become normal is the day democracy quietly begins to malfunction.