ADC, MCE, Dickson, Ezekwesili back mandatory e-transmission of results
The African Democratic Congress (ADC) has urged the National Assembly to immediately address and remove any provision that negatively affects the credibility of elections.
In the same breath, Movement for Credible Elections (MCE), alongside leaders of organised civil society and the labour movement, rejected the Senate’s amendment to Section 60(3) of the Electoral Act 2022, describing it as a setback to electoral reforms and a potential gateway to manipulation.
Also, former governor of Bayelsa State, Senator Seriake Dickson (APC, Bayelsa West) issued a blunt warning to members of the National Assembly’s committee on the Electoral Act amendment, urging them to discard the Senate’s controversial version of the bill and fully adopt the House of Representatives’ version to avert further damage to Nigeria’s already fragile democratic system.
Former Vice President of the World Bank, Dr Obiageli ‘Oby’ Ezekwesili, was not left out in the condemnation of the Senate, whom she accused of planning a coup against the country’s democracy and its people.
The opposition ADC also asked the parliament to act in a manner that aligns the final version of the bill with the recommendations of the House of Representatives, which called for mandatory e-transmission of results.
The party commended the passage of amendments that allow the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to transmit results electronically, but with a caveat that manual collection be allowed in the event of network glitches.
In a statement issued by its National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, the ADC said it stands with Nigerians in defence of transparent, credible, and verifiable elections.
MCE, in a statement yesterday signed by its Head of National Secretariat, Olawale Okunniyi, expressed “serious concern” over the amendment, which mandates electronic transmission of election results to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal, but allows a fallback to manual collation where electronic transmission is said to have failed due to network issues.
The group argued that the amendment falls short of Nigerians’ demand for mandatory electronic transmission of results without exception.
“By allowing manual result sheets (Form EC8A) to become the primary source of collation on account of alleged network failure, the Senate has inadvertently reopened the door to electoral manipulation,” the statement said.
MCE warned that in the Nigerian context, claims of “network failure” are easy to make and difficult to verify in real time, adding that such explanations had historically been used to justify result substitution and other irregularities.
Dickson, during a press conference at his Abuja residence, said the conference committee holds the fate of electoral reform in its hands and must choose between restoring public confidence or deepening national cynicism over elections.
“The choice before the conference committee is very clear,” Dickson said.
Dickson continued: “They must jettison the Senate version and adopt the House version in its entirety. Anything short of that will undermine the integrity of the electoral process and erode public trust even further.”
He stressed that the House version represents the collective agreement reached after nearly two years of painstaking work by lawmakers, electoral officials and stakeholders, while the Senate version, he argued, represents a dangerous retreat from consensus.
“This is not the time to pick and choose clauses or introduce ambiguity,” he said. “Conference committees are not set up to rewrite agreements; they are meant to harmonise positions. What we agreed on is what the House passed.”
In a statement, yesterday, Ezekwesili noted that what all well-meaning Nigerians want passed by the National Assembly as the INEC reform “is a bill which legally mandates electronic transmission of polling unit results in real time” without any condition attached.
However, she asserted that the Senate was working towards undermining transparency in the electoral process.
According to her, what Nigerians want is what the members of the House of Representatives have already passed, with this simple and honest text: “Clause 60(3): ‘INEC shall electronically transmit election results from polling units to the INEC Result Viewing Portal in real time, and such transmission shall be done simultaneously with the physical collation of results.’ Period!”
She condemned as “a grave danger to our democracy” the proviso that the Senate added to Clause 60(3): “If electronic transmission fails or becomes impossible to use, the signed Form EC8A shall be the primary source of election results.”
The proviso, she pointed out, will permanently damage the transparency that citizens are demanding in all election results.
