Nigeria’s Electoral Bill Scales Senate Hurdle, Electronic Results Transmission Not Mandatory

Following previous delays, the Senate has officially passed the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill, updating the framework for federal, state, and FCT elections.

The bill’s passage followed a late-Wednesday “Committee of the Whole” session, where lawmakers conducted a rigorous clause-by-clause review.

A significant point of contention remained the electronic transmission of results.

While the Senate maintained that digital uploads are still part of the framework, they rejected a proposal to make them mandatory.

Specifically, lawmakers voted down an amendment to Clause 60(3) that would have forced presiding officers to upload results to the IReV portal immediately.

Instead, they opted to keep the current language, leaving the method of transmission entirely to the Commission’s discretion.

By this decision, the Senate left the mode, timing and process of result transmission to the discretion of the Independent National Electoral Commission, rather than embedding compulsory real-time electronic transmission into law.

Addressing concerns that followed the vote, Senate President Godswill Akpabio dismissed claims that lawmakers had rejected electronic transmission outright.

He explained that the Senate merely declined to impose an additional mandatory requirement, stressing that electronic transmission already exists under the current law and has been deployed in previous elections.

According to Akpabio, the Senate’s approach preserves existing provisions that permit digital transmission of results, while avoiding rigid legal prescriptions that could restrict INEC’s operational flexibility, particularly in areas affected by poor network connectivity.

Under the Electoral Act 2022, electronic transmission of results is allowed but not compulsory, with INEC empowered to determine when and how technologies such as the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the IReV portal are deployed.

This framework provided the legal basis for electronic uploads during the 2023 general elections, even in the absence of a statutory obligation for real-time transmission.

The amended bill is intended to strengthen the legal framework governing elections in the FCT and is expected to be transmitted to the House of Representatives for concurrence before being forwarded to the President for assent.