The Akpabio-led Senate is fast proving itself to be an anti-democratic contraption.
I have listened carefully to the arguments advanced by the Senate President Godswill Akpabio and the Senate spokesperson and other proponents of retaining the discretionary provisions of 2022 Electoral Act on electronic transmission of results rather than upholding the mandatory provisions of the 2025 proposed amendments, and frankly, they defy reason.
The claim of inadequate internet connectivity in rural areas is sheer hogwash. Equally misleading is the suggestion that real-time transmission of results is a non sequitur simply because voting itself is manual. That argument is clever by half.
To begin with, voter registration in Nigeria was conducted manually. However, voter accreditation on Election Day is carried out electronically using the BVAS. The same BVAS is also designed to capture Form EC8A at the conclusion of voting and collation, and to transmit the polling unit results to the INEC electronic viewing portal called IREV electronically in real time.
If a network exists to enable electronic accreditation with the BVAS, then that same network necessarily exists to enable electronic transmission of results using the same device. This is a basic technological fact, not a matter of conjecture or complexity. It is standard system functionality, and certainly not rocket science.
Moreover, the argument that voting is manual and therefore cannot support real-time transmission is neither baseless. What is required to be transmitted is not the act of voting, but the final results tally at the polling unit after voting has concluded, votes have been counted, and the figures duly entered on Form EC8A, which is the primary result sheet.
Once the Presiding Officer announces the results, the completed EC8A is snapped and transmitted immediately. This process is entirely independent of whether voting itself was manual or electronic.
Furthermore, where a temporary network blind spot occurs during transmission, the BVAS automatically stores the data and uploads it once the device enters a network coverage area. This is standard operating protocol for computing devices. So the claim that results transmission will fail due to poor network coverage therefore collapses under even the lightest scrutiny.
In addition, internet connectivity across INEC’s approximately 176,000 polling units is today close to 98 percent. The narrative of widespread network absence is thus a choreographed smokescreen, not a genuine concern. To drive the point home,
Point-of-Sale (POS) machines, which are equally dependent on internet connectivity, function in virtually every village and hamlet across Nigeria.
If POS machines can operate almost everywhere in the country, there is no logical basis for claiming that the BVAS cannot do the same when they rely on the same internet operating protocol. Indeed, since its introduction in 2023, the BVAS has performed effectively for voter accreditation and results transmission, with minimal network-related failures across the federation, including during recent off-cycle and by-elections in Edo, Ondo, Anambra, Kaduna, Cross River States, etc.
The Senate should therefore desist from its attempt to cripple electronic transmission of election results using the BVAS on the basis of exaggerated, contrived, and largely non-existent network concerns.
If smaller nations like, Ghana, Senegal, Namibia, Kenya, etc can manually vote and electronically transmit election results real-time on election day such that election results are declared with 24 hours of voting, the Senate has no reasons to insist on imposing their TECH ILLITERACY on Nigeria as electoral policy in an attempt to mask rigging.
Alex Ter Adum, Ph.D
DDG THE NARRATIVE FORCE
