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The Abuja School of Social and Political Thought has called on Nigerians to take greater responsibility for protecting the integrity of the 2027 general elections.
The Director of the school, Sam Amadi, made the call at a forum in Abuja that brought together citizens, electoral officials, security agencies, political parties, and other stakeholders to examine challenges from the last general election and identify reforms ahead of the 2027 polls.
Amadi said election integrity should not rest solely with electoral authorities, stressing that citizens and other key actors must take responsibility for protecting votes and keeping the process credible.
“The Abuja School undertakes this task because the National Assembly ought to have conducted a public hearing on the election. That’s why in the world, when these events happen, you do a public hearing. And the idea of the public hearing is to ensure that actors are deposed on oath to tell us what happened so that you can design electoral reform to, you know, answer those problems,” said Amadi.
“The reason why we are doing a citizen public hearing, we want the citizens themselves to be the ones who will guarantee the integrity of elections. Don’t leave it to INEC.
“Now we are recommending that the parties themselves should take the issue of vote protection seriously. The parties should have their agents properly trained and deploy the right technology. And that’s why we have brought technology experts here.”
The forum, he said, would give stakeholders an opportunity to review what went wrong during the previous election and consider practical measures to prevent similar challenges in 2027.
Amadi said the process would also examine ways to strengthen political parties and improve their capacity to protect votes during elections.
Other areas of focus include increasing voter participation and ensuring greater public scrutiny of the electoral process before, during and after elections.
The call comes as civil society organisations and election experts intensify discussions around reforms ahead of the 2027 general elections, with concerns ranging from the capacity of political parties and their polling agents to the management and monitoring of electoral technology.
Amadi also argued that credible elections require active participation from citizens, political parties, civil society organisations, security agencies and election management bodies, rather than reliance on any single institution.
He urged citizens to take a more proactive role in monitoring and scrutinising electoral processes, arguing that the responsibility for protecting votes ultimately rests with the electorate and other stakeholders involved in the democratic process.
