It is no longer hidden that Nigerian Senators are currently agitating for mandatory transmission of election result from poling units to INEC server. These were the same people who few months ago stood on the failed APC mandate and said mandatory transmission of election result is optional.
The simple question is why the turn around now after they have lost their primary election. The Senate’s sudden passion for mandatory electronic transmission of election results did not come from love for democracy alone. No. Politics is rarely that innocent.
What changed was simple: the game turned against the players (The National Assembly) who thought they controlled it.Many lawmakers supported rigid party rules and executive backed electoral arrangements because they believed they had secured automatic return tickets. They trusted the system, until the same machinery began quietly replacing them with preferred candidates during the APC primaries.
That was the shock. The senators suddenly realized something dangerous: the political structure they helped strengthen could also be used to politically bury them.And once survival entered the conversation, transparency became attractive.
As our elders say, “The trap a man sets for another may eventually catch his own leg.”By insisting on compulsory electronic transmission without loopholes, lawmakers are no longer fighting for ideology; they are fighting to prevent party machinery from manufacturing outcomes behind closed doors.
In simple terms, many of them now understand that if elections must be won, then votes must genuinely count.The irony is powerful: those who benefited from the old system are now helping dismantle it because the system has finally turned against them.
Politics has a strange way of teaching people the value of fairness.