The Nigerian Senate has turned down a proposed amendment to the Electoral Act that sought to make the electronic transmission of election results compulsory.
On Wednesday, senators voted against changes to Clause 60, Subsection 3, of the Electoral Amendment Bill, a provision aimed at removing the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) discretion over how election results are transmitted.
If approved, the amendment would have legally required presiding officers to upload results electronically from every polling unit to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IREV) in real time, immediately after the relevant Form EC8A had been completed, signed, stamped and endorsed by party agents.
Instead, the Senate chose to retain the existing and much-debated section of the Electoral Act, which states that results should be transmitted “in a manner as prescribed by the Commission.”
By maintaining this clause, lawmakers have effectively allowed INEC to continue determining whether or not to deploy electronic transmission. Critics argue that this flexibility created loopholes that were allegedly exploited during the 2023 general elections, weakening the credibility of the process.
The decision has sparked widespread disappointment among Nigerians and civil society groups who had strongly supported the amendment as a critical safeguard against manual tampering with results at collation centres.
Political analysts, speaking to SaharaReporters, described the Senate’s action as a backward move that poses serious risks to Nigeria’s democratic future. One analyst, Gerald Ede, said the National Assembly appeared not to have learned from the shortcomings of the 2023 elections, during which the IREV portal became a source of public outrage.
According to him, rejecting compulsory electronic transmission effectively preserves a system vulnerable to manipulation and so-called “manual miracles.”
The push for mandatory real-time result uploads had been widely regarded as a key measure for rebuilding public trust in elections, especially amid growing demands for reforms that would reduce human interference.
Opponents of the Senate’s decision warn that leaving the method of transmission to INEC’s discretion—despite the commission’s history of technical failures during crucial collation periods—could perpetuate electoral disputes and further erode the legitimacy of elected officials.