THE Senate has defended its controversial decision to make the electronic transmission of election results discretionary rather than mandatory in the proposed Electoral Bill 2026, insisting the move was guided strictly by empirical data and the prevailing realities of Nigeria’s communication and power infrastructure.
  It disclosed that empirical data on Nigeria’s broadband penetration and power supply constraints informed the decision.
  
However, former Resident Electoral Commissioner (REC), Mike Igini, issued a stern warning to members of the 10th National Assembly: support mandatory real-time e-transmission of polling unit results or risk suffering the same political fate that befell many of your predecessors.
  Igini also said only a few senators would return to the National Assembly after the 2027 general election, if the proposed resort to the use of incidence form is finally enshrined in the ongoing amendment of the 2022 Electoral Act.
  Clarifying the position of the upper chamber, Leader of the Senate, Opeyemi Bamidele, said the amendment to Clause 60(3) of the Electoral Bill followed extensive consultations and careful analysis of official statistics, not political sentiment or public pressure.
  
Clause 60(3) of the proposed bill had originally stipulated that the presiding officer “shall electronically transmit the results from each polling unit to INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) in real time.”
But the Senate resolved against making real-time e-transmission mandatory and instead introduced a caveat: in the event of Internet failure, Form EC8A would serve as the primary means of result collation.
  In a statement yesterday by his Directorate of Media and Public Affairs, Bamidele explained that while e-transmission is desirable and progressive, the Senate had to weigh the country’s infrastructural limitations before enacting binding provisions.
  Citing data from the Nigerian Communications Commission (NCC), he said Nigeria attained about 70 per cent broadband coverage in 2025, while Internet penetration stood at 44.53 per cent of the population within the same period.

IN a statement entitled ‘Proviso to Real-Time Transmission of Polling Unit Results: Why a Majority of Legislators May Not Return in 2027’, Igini urged lawmakers to remove the Senate’s newly introduced proviso that qualifies direct electronic transmission of results and restore the original, unequivocal provision for real-time upload from polling units to the IReV.
  But beyond technical arguments, his message was blunt: legislators who undermine transparent electoral safeguards may be engineering their own political downfall.
  Igini reminded the 10th Assembly that earlier National Assemblies ignored well-documented vulnerabilities in Nigeria’s electoral framework, particularly weaknesses around e-transmission. Many of those lawmakers, he noted, later became victims of the very loopholes they refused to close.
  
According to him, a significant number of legislators who were denied party tickets by governors and party leaders, and subsequently defected to alternative platforms, were defeated not because they lacked grassroots support, but because polling unit results were manipulated during collation.
  He argued that the absence of mandatory real-time electronic transmission created opportunities for alterations at ward and local government collation centres, where results could be tampered with outside public scrutiny.