When a public institution proclaims itself “flawless,” it is no longer speaking the language of democracy but the dialect of self-absolution. In Nigeria’s most recent electoral exercises, the Independent National Electoral Commission elevated administrative self-assessment into public doctrine. Yet in Kogi State; where democracy is not abstract but bodily endured, the declaration of flawlessness reads less as confidence and more as constitutional amnesia.
This article is written from the margins of power. Not from the bar, the bench, or the backrooms of party machinery, but from the standpoint of a lay citizen whose only credential is participation. That position, often dismissed as anecdotal, is in fact democracy’s most critical epistemic vantage point. For elections derive legitimacy not from institutional satisfaction but from collective belief.
The Nigerian Constitution, both in letter and democratic spirit, locates sovereignty unequivocally in the people. Electoral bodies exist not as autonomous arbiters of their own excellence but as trustees of delegated authority. When such trustees declare success while beneficiaries recount alienation, the problem is no longer logistical; it is fiduciary.
Across multiple polling units in Kogi just like any other part of Nigeria, the electoral experience was characterised by latency, opacity, and attrition. Accreditation without voting. Presence without process. Participation without payoff. Elderly citizens waited until physical fatigue replaced civic resolve. Young voters, long celebrated as the future of democratic renewal, encountered a system that converted enthusiasm into endurance. These are not peripheral inconveniences; they are democratic injuries.
To insist on flawlessness in the face of these realities is to commit a category error; confusing procedural compliance with substantive legitimacy. Modern constitutional democracies do not survive on process alone. They survive on trust, and trust is experiential. A democracy may be lawful yet illegible to its citizens; when that happens, legality becomes sterile.
Comparative democratic history is instructive here. In emerging democracies from Latin America to Eastern Europe, the most dangerous phase is not authoritarian rupture but institutional arrogance. Electoral bodies that resist self-critique often become inadvertent accomplices in democratic decay. Venezuela did not lose its democracy in one election. Neither did Hungary, nor Turkey. The erosion was gradual, bureaucratic, and linguistically sanitised.
In established democracies, electoral commissions speak the language of fallibility. They publish post-election audits, invite adversarial review, and concede error as a matter of institutional hygiene. In contrast, democratic backsliding is often marked by semantic inflation; where success is declared early, loudly, and conclusively, even as citizens narrate loss.
INEC’s recourse to technological innovation, procedural manuals, and internal benchmarks, while not insignificant, cannot substitute for democratic empathy. Technology does not confer legitimacy; people do. A biometric system that functions while citizens disengage is not progress; it is alienation with software.
The deeper danger lies in what political theorists describe as participatory fatigue. When voters repeatedly invest time, hope, and physical presence only to feel erased from outcomes, withdrawal becomes rational. Apathy is not a moral failing; it is often a learned response to institutional deafness. And once apathy sets in, democratic renewal becomes exponentially harder than democratic maintenance ever was.
Kogi State, with its long memory of elite betrayals and political recalibrations, offers a microcosm of the national dilemma. The ballot remains one of the last non-violent instruments available to ordinary citizens. When that instrument appears blunted—whether by incompetence, indifference, or denial; the vacuum left behind is not neutral. History shows that such vacuums are rarely filled with moderation.
This is not an argument for despair, nor an invitation to delegitimise the electoral state. It is an argument for constitutional humility. Electoral bodies do not strengthen democracy by proclaiming perfection but by institutionalising correction. Error acknowledged is authority preserved. Error denied is authority endangered.
Nigeria does not need a flawless electoral commission. No serious democracy does. What it needs is a commission fluent in accountability, receptive to citizen testimony, and courageous enough to distinguish institutional pride from democratic duty.
Until that distinction is made, the dirge from Kogi East will persist—measured, restrained, but relentless. It will echo in folded voter cards, in unreturned polling queues, and in the quiet recalculation of citizens who still love the republic but are no longer convinced the republic listens back.
Legitimacy, after all, is not self-certified. It is granted, withdrawn, and renewed; by the people.
– Inah Boniface Ocholi writes from Ayah – Igalamela/Odolu LGA, Kogi state.
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