Senate Allows E-Transmission of Results to INEC IReV

By: Aremu Toyeebaht

The Senate has endorsed the electronic transmission of election results to the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) Result Viewing Portal (IReV), while retaining manual collation as a fallback where technological challenges arise.

The decision was taken on Tuesday at an emergency plenary, during which lawmakers revisited and amended a contentious provision of the Electoral Act Amendment Bill.

Under the revised framework, presiding officers at polling units are permitted to electronically transmit results after voting and the completion of statutory documentation. However, the Senate declined to make electronic transmission mandatory and also rejected proposals for real-time uploading of results.

The amendment provides that in situations where electronic transmission is disrupted by network or communication failures, the manually completed result sheet, Form EC8A, will take precedence as the basis for collation and declaration of results.

Explaining the changes to lawmakers, Senate President Godswill Akpabio said the amendment effectively overturned an earlier Senate position on Section 60, Subsection 3 of the Electoral Act, and invited dissenting senators to challenge the motion through due process.

“It’s very simple. If you disagree with him, move your counter motion. So, if you agree with him, you agree with me when I put the votes,” Akpabio said.

Reading the amended clause, he stated:
“The presiding officer shall electronically transmit the results from each polling unit to the IReV portal. 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 units.”

Akpabio added that the law now clearly anticipates technical limitations.
“Provided that if the electronic transmission of the results fails as a result of communication failure — in other words, maybe network or otherwise — and it becomes impossible to transmit the results electronically, the Form EC8A shall in such a case be the primary source of collation and declaration of results,” he said.