Electoral Amended Act Will Ensure Every Vote Counts – Akpabio

Godswill Akpabio

Senate President Godswill Akpabio has declared that the Electoral Act 2026 (Amendment) will ensure that every Nigerian vote is counted. He recently had his say at the signing ceremony, and Nigerians have been reacting.

According to him, the new piece of legislation has immediately gotten rid of the perennial problem of result manipulation between polling units and collation centres.

He added that it also addresses the core concerns raised by Nigerians overthe  integrity of the electoral process.

His words, “At the end, Nigerians will benefit a lot from future elections. Every vote will now count.

We took cognisance of areas where there may not be any network, where there may not be communication capacities and availability.

We said, since the polling unit result comes in form EC8A, which is signed by the presiding officer, signed by the agents, and signed in the presence of security agents, copies are given to.

Then we can use that as the primary source of collation at that unit. And then, of course, we transmit it. Even if there is no network at that time, once we step out of there, maybe towards the ward centre or the local government centre, it will drop into the iREV and people will still be able to view.

The implication of that is that if what is eventually collated at the next centre is different from what is in the iREV, Nigerians will be able to compare whether the election result had been tampered with.

For us, that had always been the problem in the country, that once election results leave a polling unit, they will be tampered with or mutilated. That has been eliminated today.

We are satisfied that we have met the aspiration of Nigerians, not those who are politically motivated.

We don’t want a situation where, in an election, you have five people contesting, one person out of 300,000 votes, scores 290,000 votes , and then, for one reason or the other, he’s disqualified by the court, and then the person who scored 1,000, who is not popularly elected, will now be declared winner.

All those things are eliminated. We have now recommended that, where such a case happens, they should call for another election.”

WOW.