Electoral Act: INEC lacks capacity to transmit results electronically

Adeniyi Adegbonmire, the chairperson of the Senate Ad Hoc Committee reviewing the amendments to the Electoral Act, has said the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) does not currently have the capacity to transmit election results electronically as demanded by many Nigerians.

Mr Adegbonmire, who represents Ondo Central Senatorial District on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), maintained that electronic transmission of results can only be effective if the electoral commission fully adopts an e-voting system.

He said such a system cannot be achieved in Nigeria at the moment, suggesting it may take two or three years before electronic transmission can be fully implemented.

The senator said these when he appeared on Arise News on Thursday to draw attention to provisions of the Electoral Act, particularly the clause allowing Form EC8A to serve as the primary means of collation in the event of internet failure.

“People need to understand what real-time means. Real-time transmission can only happen if the INEC adopts an e-voting system. For now, INEC does not have the capability for e-voting. Maybe in two or three years, we can adopt e-voting. But as of today, INEC has not put an e-voting system in place,” he said.

Mr Adegbonmire explained that the clause provides that the presiding officer must first fill Form EC8A manually, stating that this procedure would remain unchanged even with electronic transmission.

“This is the misconception that the media has brought into. The provision you keep emphasising states that the presiding officer will first enter the result manually in Form EC8A. It is the Form EC8A that has been filled manually and will be transmitted to IReV. If we change ‘transmit’ to ‘upload’ in the Electoral Bill, 2026, will it change anything? The answer is No,” he said.

Mr Adegbonmire, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and chairman of the Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters, also said the lawmakers did not abolish the use of the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal.

“It is important, first of all, to understand what IReV does because there is a lot of misconception about it or deliberate misrepresentation of what it stands for. The Senate never said INEC should not use IReV for the 2027 elections. So, what is IReV? It is software developed by INEC to publicise the results by INEC.

“IReV is not an e-voting platform as some people think. This is the misinformation some people are peddling. They keep saying, ‘When I want to see my vote.’ But in reality, IReV is a platform meant to publicise election results already declared at the polling units,” he said.

The lawmaker also criticised those calling for the harmonisation committee to adopt the version passed by the House of Representatives.

“This is not an emotional argument. I heard people say the version of the House of Representatives should be adopted. It is a sheer misconception. What does the version say? It simply says the presiding officer shall electronically transmit the result from each polling unit to the IReV portal in real time and such transmission shall be done after Form EC8A has been signed by the presiding officer and countersigned by the candidate or polling agent at the polling unit.

“Whether we call it upload, transfer, or transmission, as far as it says IReV must be used, it will be used in the manner it was configured. That is the point I am making. You must first manually write out the figure. After you have written out the figure at the polling unit, then you can upload, transfer or transmit, depending on the nomenclature we want to use.”

The Act

On Tuesday, the Senate rescinded its earlier decision on the Electoral Act amendment, which had rejected the mandatory electronic transmission of election results from polling units to the INEC’s Result Viewing Portal (IREV) after vote counting.

The lawmakers consequently re-amended the Electoral Act to accommodate the electronic transmission of results. However, the provision comes with a caveat that, in the event of internet failure, Form EC8A will serve as the primary means of result collation.

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Despite the change, the amendment does not make electronic transmission mandatory. Instead, it allows results to be transmitted electronically while providing an alternative in cases of network failure.

Form EC8A is the primary document on which the presiding officer records the results immediately after votes are counted at a polling unit. In election petitions, courts often rely heavily on EC8A forms because they represent the first official record of votes at the source.

The Senate has constituted a nine-member harmonisation committee to reconcile differences between its version of the bill and the version earlier passed by the House of Representatives.