The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has rejected the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) warning against the publication of privately collated election results, declaring that it will document, collate and share polling-unit results with Nigerians during the 2027 general elections.
The party’s position comes hours after INEC Chairman, Prof. Joash Amupitan, cautioned media organisations and other stakeholders against announcing results outside the commission’s statutory process.
Amupitan had urged the media to verify election information with INEC, stressing that the Electoral Act vests the authority to declare election results in the commission.
But the ADC, in a statement on Thursday by its National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, said INEC’s responsibility to make official declarations did not extinguish the constitutional rights of political parties and citizens to collect, collate and disseminate information.
The party said its agents would document results at polling units while its structures would collate and verify the figures before making them public.
“The ADC will share our collated results with the public. Our agents will document results, our structures will collate them, and we will communicate verified figures to the public, clearly identifying their source and status,” Abdullahi said.
According to the ADC,
independently collating and sharing election results constitutes an exercise of the right to freedom of expression and is not prohibited by the limitations placed on that right under the Constitution.
“We are aware of our rights to freedom of expression under the Constitution. We are also aware of the limitations associated with those rights. And we hold that our rights to collate and share election results are not abrogated by any of the limitation clauses,” the party said.
While acknowledging INEC’s exclusive responsibility for officially declaring election outcomes and announcing winners, the ADC maintained that this mandate could not reasonably prevent citizens or political parties from collecting and sharing polling-unit results.
The standoff sets up a potential clash between INEC’s insistence on a single official channel for result declaration and the ADC’s plan to operate its own results collation and information-sharing system during the 2027 polls.
INEC had earlier warned that privately declared figures could create conflicting narratives and undermine confidence in officially declared results.
