ANAP Foundation founder Atedo Peterside is urging Nigerians, especially young people, to vote in overwhelming numbers in future elections, arguing that sheer turnout does more to prevent rigging than almost any other single intervention, since a large enough electorate simply becomes too expensive and too difficult to manipulate.
Speaking on Channels Television, Peterside, who also founded Stanbic IBTC, rejected the idea that votes don’t count in Nigeria, arguing that politicians would not spend so heavily on campaigns and vote buying if outcomes were predetermined. He pointed to Nigeria’s youth as its greatest electoral asset, arguing that Nigerians between 18 and 25 form a bloc large enough to decide most elections outright if they register and vote together, a wave of participation he said would require massive, implausible rigging to overcome. That logic underpins GoNigeria, a non partisan civic initiative of the ANAP Foundation aimed at mobilising first time voters and other eligible Nigerians ahead of the 2027 general election.
Peterside welcomed INEC’s decision to extend the Continuous Voter Registration window, saying the original July 10 deadline was too restrictive and had fuelled fears that the commission was rushing to lock out younger voters and shrink the rolls, so the two week extension deserves applause as a genuinely positive step. Still, he argued registration means little if registered citizens are then barred from voting simply because they never collected a Permanent Voter Card, insisting the responsibility for getting PVCs into voters’ hands rests with INEC, not the other way around. He called for a system letting registered voters download their credentials or use alternative identification, such as a passport, on election day, arguing that PVC distribution has historically been vulnerable to abuse, with cards belonging to certain groups sometimes deliberately withheld to disenfranchise them, a practice he said happens at scale across the country and must stop.
Beyond electoral mechanics, Peterside argued Nigerian democracy needs four pillars of reform, electoral, judicial, security and free speech protections, warning that insecurity discourages participation while restrictions on expression undermine genuine competition. He was pointed on the judiciary specifically, criticising the continued detention of former Kaduna State Governor Nasir El Rufai despite being granted bail, calling the conditions attached to his release practically impossible to meet and describing the situation as a national scandal, one in which bail has effectively been used to keep a political opponent locked up indefinitely. You cannot claim to run free and fair elections, he argued, while political opponents are detained through unrealistic conditions, and closed by urging every eligible Nigerian to take advantage of the extended registration window as the most effective way to shape the country’s direction.
