The need for strict compliance with the use of digital membership registers in line with the Electoral Act to enhance transparency, credibility and internal democracy within political parties has been emphasized ahead of 2027 general elections.
Stakeholders in Nigeria’s electoral process made the call on Thursday 21 May in Abuja during the Sectorial Reflection Series themed “How Technology is Reshaping Electoral Participation in Nigeria,” organised by the Peering Advocacy and Advancement Centre in Africa in partnership with Legit360.
Participants drawn from political parties, civil society organisations, election observers and the media expressed concern that despite the ongoing primaries across the country, there is little evidence that political parties are deploying digital membership registers for accreditation and voting processes.
The Executive Director of Peering Advocacy and Advancement Centre in Africa, PAACA, Ezenwa Nwagwu, while speaking with journalists in the sideline of the event, said the real challenge lies not in making laws but in ensuring their implementation and impact on the electoral process.
“Passing laws is one thing, implementation and public impact are another. For political parties that have conducted primaries, we have not seen the use of their own registers,” Nwagwu said.
According to him, digitalising party membership registers would strengthen accreditation processes, improve transparency and ensure that only legitimate party members participate in primary elections.
Nwagwu argued that conversations around electoral technology should not be limited to general elections alone, stressing that political parties themselves are key electoral institutions currently managing primaries across the country.
He said it is the responsibility of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to effectively enforce compliance with the digital membership register requirement.
“If INEC insisted that parties forward their digital membership records, then the oversight responsibility should include ensuring that those registers are actually used in determining who can vote during primaries,” he said.
He further called for intensified voter sensitisation ahead of the 2027 elections, particularly on the use of technological tools such as the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Result Viewing Portal (iREV).
Clarifying misconceptions around iREV, Nwagwu explained that the platform only serves as a portal for viewing uploaded election results and does not compute or collate results as widely believed in some quarters.
Also speaking, Head of Innovation and Digital Governance at Legit360, Samuel Folorunsho, warned that failure to deploy digital membership registers during party primaries could create credibility challenges and trigger disputes over the legitimacy of outcomes.
“We may end up having a lot of complications if this is not followed through.
“When the Electoral Act introduced digital membership registers, it was meant to solve a problem by helping political parties maintain verifiable and accountable membership structures. But from reports and observations so far, we have not seen evidence that this instrument is being used during primaries”he said.
Folorunsho questioned the level of oversight by INEC, noting that while parties were mandated to submit digital registers, there appears to be inadequate monitoring to ensure compliance during the actual conduct of primaries.
“If political parties are not accountable to themselves and to their members, it becomes a challenge for the wider democratic process,” he noted.
On his part, Director-General of the Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC), Prince Chinedu Obi, acknowledged that although the digital register policy is innovative, political parties faced implementation difficulties due to limited time for member registration before submission deadlines.
Obi, who is also the National Chairman of the National Rescue Movement (NRM), argued that parties would have adjusted better if they had been given more time to compile and digitise their membership data.
“Maybe the challenges we have today would not be the same if parties had at least five months to properly register members before submission,” he said.
He maintained that political parties had complied with the law by submitting their membership registers to INEC as required.
“By INEC’s own confirmation, political parties submitted their registers according to the law. If the registers are not used during the primaries, then the responsibility shifts to INEC as the oversight body,” Obi added.
