The Senate has passed the 2022 Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2025, after embarking on about five-hour clause-by-clause consideration of the report of its 7-man Ad-hoc Committee on Electoral Matters.
However, the apex legislative Assembly ended the passage of the bill with a seeming confusion on the issue of electronic transmission of election results by rejecting the recommendation of the Committee and adopting what is contained in the principal Act.
The lawmakers therefore, ruled out real-time transmission of election results as recommended by the Committee and retained the provision for electronic transfer of results as provided for in the 2002 Electoral Act.
Accordingly, the Committee amended Section 60(3) of the principal Act recommending that: “The Presiding Officer shall electronically transmit the results from each polling unit to IREV portal in real time and such transmission shall be done after the prescribed Form EC8A has been signed and stamped by the Presiding Officer and /or countersigned by the candidates or polling agents where available at the polling unit.”
Rejecting this recommendation the Senate adopted the provision of the principal Act which states that “The presiding officer shall give to the polling agents and the police officer where available a copy each of the completed forms after it has been duly signed as provided under subsection (2).”
The bill was the only item listed on the order paper after a valedictory session for the late Okey Ezea and was approved by the committee of the whole following consideration and adoption of its 155 clauses.
The Senators also amended some other provisions while the majority of the clauses were retained as originally proposed.
One of the amendments reduced the timeline for the Independent National Electoral Commission to publish a notice of election from 360 days to 180 days.
The Senate also ruled out real-time transmission of election results and retained the provision for electronic transfer of results as provided for in the 2002 Electoral Act.
Senate President Godswill Akpabio announced that a joint Committee of the Senate and the House of Representatives would meet to harmonise the Act and send it to President Bola Tinubu for assent.
Senator Simon Lalong, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Electoral Mattters will lead the harmonisation Committee from the Red Chamber.
Other members are Tahir Monguno, Adamu Aliero, Orji Kalu, Abba Moro, Asuquo Ekpeyong, Aminu Abass, Tokunbo Abiru, and Niyi Adogbenmire.
Akpabio said that the Senate did not remove the electronic transmission of election results from the law.
“Distinguished colleagues, the social media is already awash with reports that the Senate has literally rejected electronic transmission of results. That is not true. What we did was to retain the electronic transmission which has been in the act and was used in 2022.
“So please, do not allow people to confuse you. If you are in doubt, we will make our final votes and proceedings available to you if you apply. This Senate under my watch has not rejected the electronic transmission of results. It is in my interest as a participant in the next election for such to be done. So please don’t go with the crowd.
“We have retained what was in the previous provision by way of amendment. That was all we did. The previous has made allowance for electronic transmission. So, it is still there as part of our law. We cannot afford to be going backwards,” he said.
Other key amendments adopted by the Senate, seek to bar the courts from declaring a runner-up as a winner of an election in which he/she scored less than 20 percent of the total votes cast, in situations where the actual winner gets disqualified.
In this instance, the court is required to order a re-run that will exclude such disqualified candidate and the political party that fielded such ineligible candidate.
This relates mainly to candidates who used forged certificates for INEC screening during their nomination processes.
