Emmanuel Thomas l Thursday, Sept 03, 2026
ABUJA, Nigeria — A deepening controversy over digital candidate submissions has thrust Nigeria’s election management body back into the spotlight. The opposition Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC) has accused the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of illegally “smuggling” 10 unauthorized individuals onto its official candidate nomination portal, bypassing statutory party endorsement channels.
In a formal statement, NDC officials asserted that the party never collected or submitted the mandatory statutory candidate documentation—known as Form EC9E—for the ten individuals published by INEC for state assembly seats in the southeastern state of Anambra.
The party is now demanding an immediate, transparent electronic audit trail of the electoral commission’s backend system to determine how the unauthorized credentials entered the platform.
Under Nigerian electoral regulations, political parties hold exclusive legal authority to conduct internal selection processes and nominate candidates for public office. Nominations are completed digitally through INEC’s Candidate Nomination Portal, where authorized party officers upload candidate credentials alongside Form EC9E—a key legal document verifying a candidate’s identity, qualifications, and party endorsement.
”The process is simple: the party submits, and INEC approves,” the NDC stated, noting that the standard procedure was subverted.
According to party representatives, the NDC submitted its legitimate slate of 10 candidates following internal primaries and an official appeals process. However, the commission rejected those approved candidates.
Subsequently, an entirely different set of names appeared on INEC’s published portal.
”Since the NDC neither collected nor submitted the completed EC9E forms of the 10 Anambra candidates published by INEC, how did the Commission obtain their credentials when it is the party’s legal duty to submit the names of its approved candidates?” the party asked.
The NDC’s leadership revealed that its national chairman, who serves as the designated custodian of the party’s secure portal access credentials, never authorized or executed the upload of the disputed candidate set.
The party alleges that while its legitimate candidates remained marked as “pending” on the system, officials controlling the backend portal allowed unauthorized files to be published.
In response to similar claims, INEC spokesperson Mohammed Kudu Haruna insisted that the candidate portal is fully automated and that the commission does not independently generate, alter, or upload candidate details.
The commission maintained that published listings reflect documents received under valid party signatures.
The sharp contradiction between the physical documentation flow and the portal output has raised wider concerns regarding cybersecurity, administrative oversight, and potential insider access within Nigeria’s electoral infrastructure.
Nigeria has increasingly relied on digital technology to modernize its election administration, introducing automated portals for voter registration, polling results, and political party candidate nominations. While these tools were designed to eliminate manual tampering and ghost candidacies, disputes over access controls and backend permissions continue to trigger post-primary litigation.
As political parties prepare for upcoming electoral cycles, analysts warn that unresolved technical discrepancies risk undermining public trust in automated electoral portals.
The NDC has stated it will pursue all legal administrative channels to enforce a system-wide audit of the portal’s backend server logs.
