PRESS RELEASE
The Nigerian Guild of Editors (NGE) has called for far-reaching constitutional and electoral reforms, including a 50% vote threshold for the election of the country’s president, and the resolution of electoral disputes before the inauguration of winners.
Other major resolutions contained in the Communiqué of the 22nd All Nigeria Editors Conference (ANEC 2026), 24-26 September in Enugu, eastern Nigeria, also include the call for a review of the process of appointing the Chairman, National and State Commissioners of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
The calls echo the growing demand for a new constitution or review of Nigeria’s 1999 constitution, which provides for a simple majority vote and at least 25% in each of two-thirds of the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory to elect a president, failing which the two front-runners go into a run-off election.
The call for electoral reforms is perennial in Africa’s most populous nation with more than 230 million people, and projected registered voters of more than 100 million.
The conference, held under the theme, “The Ballot, the Media and the Task of Keeping Democracy Alive,” was chaired by the Obi of Onitsha, His Royal Majesty Igwe Nnaemeka Alfred Achebe, while the Archbishop Emeritus of Abuja, His Eminence John Cardinal Onaiyekan, delivered the keynote address.
Nigeria’s Vice-President Kashim Shettima participated virtually as Special Guest of Honour, while Enugu State Governor, Dr Peter Ndubuisi Mbah, was the Chief Host, with more than 500 editors, publishers and senior media professionals, political, traditional, religious, academic, regulatory and development-sector leaders also in attendance.
According to the Communiqué, the conference examined the challenges confronting Nigeria’s electoral democracy, particularly the threats posed by artificial intelligence, misinformation, disinformation, electoral insecurity and declining public confidence in the electoral process ahead of the 2027 general elections.
It said the editors observed that “while the ballot remained the principal instrument through which citizens exercise their sovereign will, its value depended on credible information, public confidence in the electoral process and the assurance that votes would be properly counted and respected.”
Voter apathy was identified “as a product of several factors, including poor governance, electoral violence and intimidation, administrative shortcomings, declining public confidence and concerns over the relationship between electoral outcomes and subsequent judicial decisions,” the Communiqué added.
The editors also “expressed concern that judicial interventions in some electoral disputes had created perceptions in sections of the public that court decisions could displace outcomes recorded at the ballot box.”
The Guild, therefore, “stressed the need to respect judicial independence, while calling for electoral adjudication that is timely, transparent, predictable and impartial, with genuine electoral irregularities appropriately addressed.”
The editors further called for resolving of electoral disputes “within appropriate timelines and preferably before the swearing-in of declared winners.”
They recommended consideration of “an appropriate constitutional (vote) threshold for presidential elections and provision for a run-off where the candidate with the highest number of votes fails to secure up to 50% of the votes cast.”
The Guild also called for “a review of the limitations placed on voters seeking to challenge electoral results,” and advocated a constitutional framework that would permit independent candidacy.
The conference identified “generative artificial intelligence, deep fakes, voice cloning and automated networks as emerging major threats to the integrity of electoral information,” warning that “synthetic content could be produced and distributed rapidly, including fabricated election results, cloned voices of public officials, forged documents, manipulated result sheets and fake reports attributed to established media organisations.”
The editors said the “greatest danger was not merely the circulation of individual falsehoods but the broader erosion of public trust when citizens became unable to distinguish authentic information from fabricated content.”
The Guild therefore urged “newsrooms to institutionalise factchecking and verification systems and integrate digital verification, deep fake detection and forensic tools into their editorial workflows.”
It also reaffirmed the Nigerian Media Code of Election Coverage (Revised 2022), jointly endorsed by the Newspaper Proprietors’ Association of Nigeria, Broadcasting Organisations of Nigeria, Nigeria Union of Journalists, Nigerian Guild of Editors, Radio, Television, Theatre and Arts Workers Union and Guild of Corporate Online Publishers.
The Guild urged all news organisations to adopt the Code and train their journalists and other editorial staff on its provisions ahead of the 2027 elections, while affirming “the responsibility of the media to provide accurate, verified and independent information, and to scrutinise governments, political parties and other centres of power.”
It, however, noted “that media scrutiny should not amount to suppressing legitimate achievements,” and called for “evidence-based journalism that neither exaggerates failures nor suppresses verified achievements and developments.”
The Guild also explained that “editorial neutrality meant impartiality among legitimate political contenders and did not require journalists to remain silent in the face of verified wrongdoing or create false equivalence between facts and unverified claims.”
The conference urged governments at all levels “to remain transparent and accountable and to cooperate with the media in the legitimate exercise of its watchdog role, including the scrutiny of public programmes and expenditure.”
It also called on “government and political actors to guarantee equitable access to media space for both government and opposition voices while respecting editorial independence,” noting that “election security must include the safety and protection of journalists covering elections.”
The Guild warned that “the electoral process could not be fully transparent (if) journalists were threatened, attacked, obstructed or prevented from independently observing and reporting events.”
It therefore called on “security agencies and political actors to protect journalists and ensure that they performed their constitutional and professional responsibilities without intimidation.”
The NGE also urged INEC “to sustain nationwide readiness assessments, strengthen technical partnerships for cybersecurity and electoral technology, ensure the technical integrity of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and protect the institutional independence of the electoral commission.”
It noted that “all technology deployed in elections must remain subject to human oversight, transparency, accountability and legal verification.”
On the challenge of reporting terrorism, the editors “acknowledged the difficult balance between the public’s right to know about terrorist attacks and the danger that irresponsible reporting could inadvertently amplify terrorist propaganda, aid recruitment, compromise security operations or traumatise victims.”
The conference consequently endorsed the principle: “Inform, Don’t Amplify.”
It urged newsrooms “to identify terrorist claims clearly as claims until independently verified and to avoid reproducing propaganda, recruitment messages, slogans or graphic material except where there was compelling editorial justification.”
The conference also reaffirmed that the media should remain “pro-Nigeria, pro-Ballot and pro-People”, rather than align itself with any political party, noting that the “credibility of Nigeria’s democracy ultimately depended on an electoral process in which citizens could make informed choices, cast their votes freely and have confidence that their votes would be accurately counted and respected.”
Among the papers presented at the conference were those by former Nigerian Bar Association President, Mazi Afam Osigwe, SAN, on “Election Petitions in the Digital Age: Independence, Evidence, BVAS and the Courts”; Prof. Auwalu H. Yadudu of Bayero University, Kano, on “Public Trust, Electoral Justice and Democratic Stability”; and former Managing Director/Editor-in-Chief of The Guardian Newspapers, Mr Martin Oloja, on “Terrorism Without Becoming a Tool for Terrorists.”
Other papers were by Prof. Chinyere Stella Okunna of Paul University, Awka, on “Election Security in Democratic Governance”; Prof. Farooq A. Kperogi of Kennesaw State University, Georgia, USA, on “When Lies Look Real: Detecting and Debunking AI Disinformation Before, During and After Election”; and Dr Richard Okoye, Founder/Chief Medical Director of Save a Life Hospital, on “Managing Stress, Deadlines and Personal Well-being.”
The Guild thanked the Government and people of Enugu State for their hospitality and support, and the conference speakers, presenters, panellists, sponsors and development partners for their contributions.##
