The Senate on Thursday insisted that the Independent National Electoral Commission does not currently possess the capacity to conduct electronic voting, clarifying that the electronic transmission of results should not be misconstrued as the adoption of an e-voting system.
Chairman of the Senate Ad-hoc Committee reviewing the 2026 Electoral Bill, Senator Adeniyi Adegbonmire, made the clarification during an interview on Arise News amid lingering controversy over the National Assembly’s handling of provisions relating to result transmission and the use of the INEC Result Viewing Portal.
The upper chamber stressed that IReV “is not an e-voting platform, but a platform where the election results that have been manually counted and declared at the polling units are uploaded and publicised.”
The Senate had constituted the seven-man ad-hoc panel to review the report of its Committee on Electoral Matters, harmonise divergent views and address grey areas identified during deliberations on the Electoral Act (Repeal and Re-enactment) Amendment Bill, 2026, appointing Adegbonmire to lead the panel.
Speaking on the decision of the Senate, Adegbonmire said contrary to insinuations in some quarters, Nigeria had not transitioned to an electronic voting regime.
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He said, “People need to understand what real-time means. Real-time transmission can only happen if the INEC adopts an e-voting system. For now, INEC does not have the capability for e-voting. Maybe in two or three years, we can adopt e-voting. But as of today, INEC has not put an e-voting system in place.”
The senator described the controversy as fuelled by misinformation.
“This is the misconception that the media has brought into play. The provision you keep emphasising says the presiding officer will first fill in the result manually in Form EC8A. It is the form that has been filled out manually and will be transmitted to IReV. If we change ‘transmit’ to ‘upload’ in the Electoral Bill, 2026, will it change anything? The answer is No.”
Adegbonmire, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and Chairman of the Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters, said misconceptions surrounding IReV must be corrected, given their implications for national stability.
According to him, IReV “is not a voting platform. Rather, it is a platform meant to publicise election results already declared by the presiding officers at polling units across the federation.
He said, “It is important, first of all, to understand what IReV does because there is a lot of misconception about it or deliberate misrepresentation of what it stands for. The Senate never said INEC should not use IReV for the 2027 elections. So, what is IReV? It is software developed by INEC to publicise the results by INEC.
“IReV is not an e-voting platform as some people think. This is the misinformation some people are peddling. They keep saying when I want to see my vote. But in reality, IReV is a platform meant to publicise election results already declared at the polling units.
“This is not an emotional argument. I heard people say the version of the House of Representatives should be adopted. It is a sheer misconception. What does the version say? It simply says the presiding officer shall electronically transmit the result from each polling unit to the IReV portal in real time, and such transmission shall be done after Form EC8A has been signed by the presiding officer and countersigned by the candidate or polling agent at the polling unit.”
