ABUJA, Nigeria — Senate has passed the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill after a marathon clause-by-clause session, but rejected a proposal that would have made real-time electronic transmission of polling-unit results mandatory, a move that immediately triggered criticism from opposition parties and election-reform advocates.
Lawmakers declined the new wording in Clause 60(3) that sought compulsory upload of Form EC8A polling-unit results to INEC’s IReV platform in real time. Instead, they retained the 2022-style language that leaves transmission “in a manner prescribed by the Commission.” Soon after the vote, Senate President Godswill Akpabio said reports that the chamber had “rejected electronic transmission” were inaccurate, arguing that e-transmission remains in the law but not as a strict real-time mandate.
Beyond the transmission dispute, Senate approved several consequential timeline changes: notice of election was reduced from 360 days to 180 days, while political parties’ deadline for submitting candidate lists moved from 180 days to 90 days before general elections. It also retained the Permanent Voter Card as the primary voter ID at polling units and entrenched BVAS for accreditation.
On sanctions, senators rejected a proposed 10-year prison term for vote-buying tied to PVC trading and kept a lower jail term while increasing the monetary penalty.
The amendments now head to harmonisation with House provisions before transmission to President Bola Tinubu for assent.
Political backlash was swift. Opposition figures, including Atiku Abubakar and Labour Party voices, said the decision weakens transparency and preserves room for manipulation at collation stages. Civil society actors echoed concerns that discretionary wording could produce uneven implementation across elections.
Meanwhile, INEC warned that prolonged delay in finalising the legal framework could disrupt operational sequencing for 2027, even as the commission said it has internally finalised preparatory scheduling and plans a nationwide voter revalidation exercise to clean up the register.
The core fault line now is political, not technical: whether 2027 should run on mandatory, verifiable real-time uploads or on a more flexible model controlled by INEC regulations under the Act’s current wording. As harmonisation begins, that single design choice is likely to define public trust in the next general election cycle.
