Nigeria Is Not Prepared For Real-Time Election Results Transmission – Senate

Godswill Akpabio

The Senate has insisted that the Independent National Electoral Commission does not currently possess the capacity to conduct electronic voting. Chairman of the Senate Ad-hoc Committee reviewing the 2026 Electoral Bill, Senator Adeniyi Adegbonmire, recently had his say during an interview on Arise News amid lingering controversy over the National Assembly’s handling of provisions relating to result transmission.

According to him, the electronic transmission of results should not be misconstrued as the adoption of an e-voting system, and contrary to insinuations in some quarters, Nigeria has not transitioned to an electronic voting regime.

He added that the present controversy has been mainly fuelled by misinformation.

His words, “People need to understand what real-time means. Real-time transmission can only happen if the INEC adopts an e-voting system. For now, INEC does not have the capability for e-voting. Maybe in two or three years, we can adopt e-voting. But as of today, INEC has not put an e-voting system in place.

This is the misconception that the media has brought into play. The provision you keep emphasising says the presiding officer will first fill in the result manually in Form EC8A. It is the form that has been filled out manually and will be transmitted to IReV. If we change ‘transmit’ to ‘upload’ in the Electoral Bill, 2026, will it change anything? The answer is No.

It is important, first of all, to understand what IReV does because there is a lot of misconception about it or deliberate misrepresentation of what it stands for. The Senate never said INEC should not use IReV for the 2027 elections. So, what is IReV? It is software developed by INEC to publicise the results by INEC.

IReV is not an e-voting platform as some people think. This is the misinformation some people are peddling. They keep saying when I want to see my vote. But in reality, IReV is a platform meant to publicise election results already declared at the polling units.

This is not an emotional argument. I heard people say the version of the House of Representatives should be adopted. It is a sheer misconception. What does the version say? It simply says the presiding officer shall electronically transmit the result from each polling unit to the IReV portal in real time, and such transmission shall be done after Form EC8A has been signed by the presiding officer and countersigned by the candidate or polling agent at the polling unit.

IReV, as an electronic platform to display election results, had a pattern of working, and the National Assembly cannot change the software by mere legislation. It was a sheer misconception to conclude that the Senate declined the use of IReV for the transmission of election results.

Whether we call it upload, transfer, or transmission, as far as it says IReV must be used, it will be used in the manner it was configured. That is the point I am making. You must first manually write out the figure. After you have written out the figure at the polling unit, you can upload, transfer or transmit depending on the nomenclature we want to use.

When you have not complied with the proper filing of Form EC8A, you cannot transfer, transmit or upload it. That is what people must understand. When you talk about transmission, it has nothing to do with the sanctity of the voting process. If you are given a ballot paper to thumbprint, it is counted manually after the election. It is not IReV or BVAS that counts ballots. Vote count is manually done.

In my own case, for instance, I come from Akure. I vote in Akure. All the electoral materials are brought into Akure two to three days before the election. They are kept in the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN). The night before, they start transporting them to different locations across the state.

In Ondo State, there are places where one has to travel for eight hours to get there. In some cases, they have to use boats to get to the riverine areas. This means voting cannot start at the same time nationwide. In Akure, voting can start at 10:00 a.m.”

WOW.