Senate May Vote Realtime Electronic Result Transmission, Debates Committee Report Today

• Vote-trading offenders to risk N5m fine

Sunday Aborisade in Abuja

Senate may take a decisive step towards tightening Nigeria’s electoral process ahead of the 2027 general election, with realtime electronic transmission of results at the centre of far-reaching amendments to the Electoral Act.

The proposed provision, which mandates the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to electronically transmit results from polling units directly to INEC Result Viewing Portal (IREV) immediately after vote counting, would be debated clause by clause today when Senate considers the report of its Committee on Electoral Matters.

The report, scheduled for plenary consideration, was laid before senators yesterday following a motion by Senate Leader, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele (Ekiti Central), who urged his colleagues to study the document ahead of deliberations on what he described as a highly sensitive piece of legislation.

Bamidele, with the approval of President of the Senate, Senator Godswill Akpabio, disclosed that a brief closed-door session would precede the committee-of-the-whole consideration to allow senators to exchange views on the report before final debate.

A copy of the committee’s report obtained yesterday indicated that a new subsection (3) had been inserted into the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill, 2025, specifically to curb manipulation of results and incidents of ballot box-snatching.

The new provision states unequivocally, “INEC shall electronically transmit election results from each polling unit to the IREV portal in real time and such transmission shall be done simultaneously with the physical collation of results.”

In another significant reform, the committee introduced a new subsection (2) to Section 77, making it a punishable offence for presiding officers to fail to sign and stamp ballot papers and the results they announced at polling units.

To align the law with current electoral technology, Sections 47(2) and (3) were also amended by replacing references to the “smart card reader” with the “Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS),” formally recognising BVAS as the legally approved accreditation tool.

The report further amended Section 54(1) to address alleged abuses during voting by visually impaired and incapacitated persons.

Under the proposed changes, political party agents, candidates, or officials would be barred from accompanying such voters into the voting cubicle, a move aimed at protecting the secrecy and integrity of their ballots.

In a bid to deter vote-trading and the illicit handling of voters’ cards, the committee recommended stiffer penalties for the buying and selling of Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs).

The amendment proposed an increase in the fine under Section 22 from N500,000 to N5 million for offenders.

Given the implications of the proposed amendments for Nigeria’s democracy, Akpabio appealed to senators to approach the exercise with diligence and restraint.

He stated, “Distinguished colleagues, as suggested by the leader, please, let us study the report very well ahead of final consideration tomorrow, first at the closed-door session, and then at the committee of the whole.”

Today’s debate is expected to set the tone for what could become the most consequential overhaul of Nigeria’s electoral framework since the introduction of electronic accreditation and result viewing.