By Dakuku Peterside
There is something reassuring about the ritual of political rivals gathering beneath the same roof and signing their names to a common promise of peace. In a country where elections have too often been accompanied by intimidation, inflammatory rhetoric and violence, the symbolism matters. It says that political competition need not become warfare; that opponents are adversaries, not enemies; and that the pursuit of power must remain subordinate to the survival of the republic.
That is why the National Peace Accord signed in Abuja on August 18, 2026, deserves to be welcomed. Facilitated by the National Peace Committee in partnership with The Kukah Centre, it commits political actors to peaceful, credible, free, and fair elections, rejects violence and hate speech, and calls for impartiality from the electoral commission and professionalism from security agencies.
But Nigeria must be careful not to mistake a declaration of good intentions for an architecture of credible elections.
A peace accord can moderate political behaviour, establish a moral baseline and give citizens a standard by which to judge candidates. What it cannot do is neutralise structural inequalities embedded in the electoral environment.
The greatest threat to the next general election may be quieter than spectacular fraud or election-day violence: the gradual tilting of the political field before voters reach polling units.
An opposition rally denied access to a stadium. A campaign permit delayed without explanation. Billboard charges raised beyond reasonable reach. State-owned media giving disproportionate attention to incumbents. Government events becoming indistinguishable from campaign appearances. Security regulations applied rigorously to one political group and indulgently to another.
Each incident may appear administrative. Taken together, they can alter the character of an election.
This is the danger of electoral tilting: democracy may preserve the rituals of competition while weakening substantive equality. Candidates remain on the ballot, campaigns continue and votes are counted, yet the conditions under which those votes are sought may already be distorted.
The lesson is uncomfortable but essential: elections are not made fair on election day alone.
It begins with who may campaign freely, access public facilities, receive reasonable media exposure and advertise without arbitrary obstruction—and whether government respects the boundary between public office and partisan advantage.
Once participation becomes dependent on administrative discretion, democracy risks becoming a permission economy in which those who control the state also influence the conditions under which they are challenged.
A level ballot cannot fully compensate for an uneven field.
The same concern applies to the institution entrusted with managing elections. INEC cannot be expected to command public confidence merely because the Constitution describes it as independent. Independence must be visible in its finances, operations, technology, staffing, and decision-making.
Financial dependence creates vulnerability. Delayed funding can become delayed logistics. Delayed logistics can become disenfranchisement. Administrative weakness may achieve what crude manipulation once required.
The legal framework matters just as much.
Nigeria entered the post-2023 electoral cycle with unresolved questions about electronic transmission, collation and the evidentiary burden on petitioners challenging disputed outcomes. Where the law permits uncertainty between polling-unit results, electronic records and subsequent collation, mistrust grows. When petitions are extraordinarily difficult to prove because litigants must assemble vast volumes of polling-unit documents and technological evidence, citizens may wonder whether legal remedies are genuinely accessible or merely theoretical.
This is why electoral reform cannot stop at purchasing machines.
Technology can strengthen elections, but technology does not abolish politics.
BVAS and IReV are important efforts to improve accreditation and results transparency. Yet technology is only as credible as the rules, safeguards and audit trails surrounding it. Systems can fail, networks disappear and records be contested. Disinformation can exploit technical uncertainty faster than official explanations can restore confidence.
Artificial intelligence has lowered the cost of convincing falsehoods. Deepfakes, fabricated audio, manipulated images and coordinated disinformation can sweep through political communities before fact-checkers or regulators respond. Digital campaigns can seek not merely to persuade voters, but to confuse, provoke or convince them that voting is pointless.
In such an environment, transparency is no longer an administrative virtue. It is a democratic necessity.
Election technology must therefore be resilient, independently auditable and supported by clear legal rules. Procedures for electronic transmission should not remain open to endless interpretation. Technology must reduce uncertainty, not become another arena in which uncertainty is weaponised.
Security agencies face an equally important test.
The Peace Accord properly asks candidates to restrain their supporters. But restraint loses moral force if enforcement itself becomes selective.
When one rally receives protection while another faces disruption; when organisers fear harassment; or when journalists, donors and campaign workers believe association with certain candidates carries personal risk, democratic space contracts.
A citizen who fears attending a rally may soon fear displaying a poster. Communities may stop reporting intimidation; volunteers and donors may withdraw; journalists may self-censor. Participation narrows without any formal suspension of democratic rights.
That is how democracies can weaken while their institutions remain outwardly intact.
Security neutrality must therefore be enforceable, not ceremonial. Rules of engagement during campaigns and elections should be publicly known. Complaints must be independently monitored. Violations should attract consequences. No commander should be permitted to convert state coercive power into partisan advantage.
Then there is the more familiar problem of incumbency.
Office naturally confers visibility, access to information, public recognition and a record to showcase. These advantages become dangerous when the line between governing and campaigning disappears.
Public advertising may begin to resemble partisan propaganda. Government programmes may be launched to maximise electoral impact. Official travel can become political mobilisation. Public procurement and social interventions may be influenced by campaign timing. State infrastructure can quietly become campaign infrastructure.
The answer is not to freeze government during election season, but to separate legitimate governance from partisan exploitation.
Nigeria needs an enforceable incumbency code because public office must never confer ownership of public resources.
The same discipline is required in political speech.
Hate speech is often dismissed as the excess of heated campaigning. That is a mistake. In a country where political identities frequently intersect with ethnicity, religion and region, reckless rhetoric can turn ordinary political competition into an existential confrontation.
Once voters are persuaded that an election is not merely about policies or competence but about the survival of their community, electoral defeat becomes harder to accept, and political compromise becomes more difficult.
The Peace Accord condemns hate speech. But presidential signatures cannot control thousands of candidates, party officials, influencers, and supporters across the federation. Its principles must therefore travel downwards—from national party leadership to states, local governments, wards, and communities.
Political parties must discipline their own members. Technology companies must take coordinated manipulation seriously. Civil society, religious institutions, traditional leaders, youth organisations, and the media must strengthen early-warning mechanisms to identify and defuse dangerous rhetoric before it acquires a life of its own.
Failure will resonate far beyond the declaration of a winner.
Repeatedly tilted elections deepen regional suspicion, increase alienation and weaken attachment to constitutional processes. Electoral uncertainty raises political risk, discourages investment and complicates economic planning. A society that repeatedly doubts its elections may eventually doubt democracy itself.
Nigeria’s democratic standing has never depended simply on its capacity to organise elections. As one of Africa’s largest democracies, it carries a heavier responsibility: to demonstrate that political competition can be meaningful, that rules can constrain power, and that electoral legitimacy can survive intense rivalry.
The months ahead should therefore be devoted not merely to election preparation but to building an architecture of electoral fairness.
INEC should make preparedness more visible through transparent reporting on logistics, technology, and election-related compliance. Governments should guarantee equal access to public facilities and state-owned media while separating official functions from partisan campaigning. Security agencies should publish neutrality protocols and submit election-related conduct to credible oversight. Political parties should appoint compliance officers and accept responsibility for supporters who violate agreed standards. Civil society and the media should systematically monitor venue access, airtime, security conduct, campaign financing, and digital integrity, and publish regular election-readiness scorecards for citizens.
None of this diminishes the Peace Accord.
It gives it meaning.
Democracies need rituals. Handshakes matter. Signatures matter. Public promises matter. They express the standards a society expects its leaders to observe.
But the deeper lesson of Nigerian electoral history is that peace cannot rest on goodwill alone.
A peaceful election is not necessarily a credible election. There may be no gunshots at polling stations and yet citizens may still conclude that the field was unfair. Ballots may be accurately counted, and yet confidence may remain weak because the conditions preceding the vote were unequal.
Electoral legitimacy is cumulative.
It is built from the confidence that candidates were free to compete, citizens were free to choose, institutions acted independently, security agencies remained neutral, technology worked transparently, and the same rules applied regardless of who held power.
That is the real test before Nigeria in 2027.
Dr Dakuku Peterside is the author of Leading in a Storm and Beneath the Surface.