By The Senate has passed a revised Electoral Act Amendment Bill that now mandates the electronic transmission of election results from polling units. This legislative reversal comes after weeks of intense scrutiny and protests over an earlier version of the bill, which had controversially omitted the requirement for digital transparency.
Under the newly approved provisions, the integrity of the voting process is anchored on the Presiding Officer at each polling unit. Once Form EC8A has been duly completed, signed, and stamped by the officer—and countersigned by available party agents—the results must be immediately transmitted electronically to the Independent National Electoral Commission’s Result Viewing Portal (IReV). This mechanism is designed to ensure that the figures announced at the polling unit are the same figures that reach the final collation center.
However, the amendment introduces a pragmatic fail-safe for Nigeria’s infrastructural realities. The Senate has included an exception clause for situations where communication challenges make electronic upload impossible. In such rare instances where technology fails, the physical, signed, and stamped Form EC8A will retain its validity as the primary document for the collation and declaration of election results, ensuring that the voting record remains intact even in the absence of digital connectivity.
