Senate President Godswill Akpabio has clarified that the National Assembly did not reject the electronic transmission of election results, but rather retained the relevant provision as contained in the 2022 Electoral Act.
Akpabio made the clarification on Saturday in Abuja while speaking at a book launch addressing the challenges of lawmaking in Nigeria.
He explained that electronic transmission of results remains permissible under the law, noting that lawmakers only removed the phrase “real time” to avoid possible legal and technical disputes.
“All we said during the discussion was that we should remove the word ‘real-time’,” Akpabio said. “If there is a network or grid failure and transmission is delayed, someone could go to court and argue that it ought to have been real-time. That was our concern.”
According to him, the decision was intended to give the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) the flexibility to determine the most suitable mode of result transmission, taking into account technological limitations and security considerations.
Akpabio added that the Senate remains committed to passing laws that reflect the will and interests of Nigerians.
Reacting to the controversy, former Senate President David Mark said the National Assembly should allow INEC the discretion to decide whether election results should be transmitted electronically.
Mark, who is associated with the African Democratic Congress (ADC), added that the party fully supports the electronic transmission of election results.
The clarification follows public backlash over the Senate’s passage last week of the Electoral Act 2022 (Repeal and Re-enactment) Amendment Bill 2026 at third reading.
During the process, the Senate declined to approve a proposed amendment to Clause 60(3), which sought to make the electronic transmission of election results mandatory.
The rejected amendment would have required INEC presiding officers to transmit results electronically from each polling unit to the IREV portal in real time after Form EC&A had been signed and stamped by the presiding officer and countersigned by party agents.
Instead, the Senate retained the existing provision of the Electoral Act, which states that “the presiding officer shall transfer the results, including the total number of accredited voters and the results of the ballot, in a manner as prescribed by the Commission.”
