“We never said what we said”
The Nigerian Senate denied scrapping electronic result transmission, confirming existing 2022 Electoral Act provisions remain. Media reports were labelled misleading.
The Nigerian Senate issued a clarification denying that it rejected the electronic transmission of election results during consideration of amendments to the Electoral Act. Media reports had indicated that the Senate voted down a proposal to make real-time electronic transmission of polling-unit results mandatory. Senate President Godswill Akpabio said the interpretation was misleading and that the electronic transmission provision remains in the law. He said the Senate retained the existing transmission provisions from the 2022 Electoral Act, not removed them. The issue remains sensitive in ongoing electoral reform debates, with civil society and opposition parties pushing for clearer legal backing.
The Senate’s denial that it rejected the electronic transmission of election results is a classic case of political management. Senate President Godswill Akpabio insists the chamber “retained the electronic transmission that was in the act and was used in 2022.” This attempts to frame the action as continuity in the face of public mistrust. However, this narrative conflicts directly with the expectations of civil society and opposition groups.
They demanded explicit, mandatory language to close procedural loopholes. They aimed to prevent the manual interference that has marred past polls. The Senate chose to retain the existing provision delegating the final decision on the “manner” of transmission to the regulator, INEC. This represents a strategic avoidance of a legally binding commitment and preserves significant discretionary power within the state apparatus.
Explicit, mandatory electronic transmission is a non-negotiable pillar for modern electoral integrity as it creates a verifiable digital audit trail and dramatically shrinks the space for manipulation between the polling unit and the final collation centre. This interval is a historical vulnerability in Nigeria’s elections, as the direct upload of scanned, signed result sheets to a public portal would empower citizens to independently tally results in near-real-time, transforming them from passive spectators into active auditors.
Countries that have institutionalised this transparency have reaped significant gains in public trust. Ghana has a well-established practice of transparent, sequential collation. This has cemented its reputation for credible transfers of power. Similarly, Kenya’s integrated electronic results transmission system was pivotal in 2022. It provided a publicly accessible stream of provisional results that matched the manual tally.
In stark contrast, Nigeria’s persistent ambiguity on this point is why its democratic legitimacy lags behind regional peers. The discretionary clause retained by the Senate recreates the exact conditions that sparked the legal crises of the 2023 election. When the system failed, the resulting information blackout fatally undermined public confidence and provided fertile ground for allegations of wholesale fraud.
This pattern of creating legal loopholes for potential manual intervention institutionalises doubt. Mr Akpabio’s personal stake is revealing. He said, “It is in my interest as a participant in the next election for such to be done.”
This statement inadvertently highlights how reforms are evaluated through the lens of incumbent advantage rather than systemic integrity. The event underscores a recurring pattern in governance here. Managing public perception is often as critical as the legislative action itself.
The Senate’s primary achievement was not strengthening the electoral framework. It was the successful deflection of an immediate public relations crisis. The fundamental ambiguity that enables fraud remains codified in law. The refusal to mandate an unambiguous process is not a minor technicality. It is a deliberate choice to preserve a systemic vulnerability. It leaves the country’s democracy in a perpetual state of contested legitimacy.