Abstract:
This article analyses democracy and the challenge of credible election. It explores how the failure of Nigeria's independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)to collate and transmit votes in real time via the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) despite the many promises of credibility of electronic voting during the 2023 presidential election negatively affected the electoral process leading to the challenge of the electoral outcome in the court of law. Building on institutional theory, the study argues that, it is not enough to put in place electronic voting rather demonstrates that institutional inefficiency such as delay in uploading and transmitting electoral results into the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS)and poor operational capacity of INEC in timely collation of results contradicts transparency a hallmark of democracy. The article examines how the challenge posed by non-timely transmission of election results, undermined the electoral outcome and pose a challenge to credible polls. It concludes that the combination of several factors and particularly elite corruption, led to the failure of INEC to conduct credible polls. In the alternative, the study made some policy recommendations for credible polls.
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