The Senate has declared that Nigeria does not currently have the infrastructure or capacity to transmit election results in real time, saying the country’s electoral system remains fundamentally manual despite the use of technology to display results after they have been counted.
Senator Adeniyi Adegbonmire, Chairman of the Senate Ad-hoc Committee reviewing the 2026 Electoral Bill, made the position clear on Thursday, February 12, during an appearance on Arise News, where he sought to address the controversy that has trailed the National Assembly’s handling of electronic result transmission provisions.
Adegbonmire said the public conversation around real-time transmission was based on a misunderstanding of what the system can actually deliver at this stage.
“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,” he said.
The senator, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria who also chairs the Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters, explained that the INEC Result Viewing Portal, commonly known as IReV, is not an electronic voting platform but simply a tool for publishing results that have already been manually counted and declared at polling units.
“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,” he said.
He stressed that the process of recording election results remains entirely manual, regardless of what terminology is used to describe how those results are shared digitally.
“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 said.
The senator dismissed claims that the Senate had blocked the use of IReV for the 2027 elections.
“The Senate never said INEC should not use IReV for the 2027 elections,” he said, adding that the debate over whether results should be “uploaded,” “transferred,” or “transmitted” was immaterial.
“Whether we call it upload, transfer, or transmission, as far as it says IReV must be used, it will be used in the manner it was configured. That is the point I am making,” he said.
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He also cautioned against comparing the Senate’s position with that of the House of Representatives without understanding what the House version actually says.
“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,” he said.
Adegbonmire argued that the National Assembly does not have the power to alter how IReV functions through legislation.
“IReV, as an electronic platform to display election results, had a pattern of working, and the National Assembly cannot change the software by mere legislation,” he said.
He pointed to Nigeria’s vast and uneven terrain as a practical barrier to simultaneous result uploads across the country.
Using his home state of Ondo as an example, the senator described the logistical challenges involved in distributing materials and conducting elections in remote communities.
“In Ondo State, there are places where one has to travel for eight hours to get there. In some cases, they have to use boats to get to the riverine areas. This means voting cannot start at the same time nationwide.
“In Akure, voting can start at 10:00 a.m. In other parts of the state, voting may not start until 2:00 p.m., or even some at 4:00 p.m. in some cases. Most likely, they will finish the vote count by 10:00 p.m,” he said.
The senator warned that imposing rigid upload timelines could create problems rather than solve them, as delays caused by poor network coverage or logistical difficulties could be misinterpreted as evidence of manipulation.
“If somebody said the election result was declared at 2:00 p.m, how did you put it on IReV at 7:00 p.m.? They will simply assume that the election results must have been rigged. The media need to be careful how they report all these issues,” he said.m
Adegbonmire leads a seven-man ad-hoc panel set up by the Senate to review the report of its Committee on Electoral Matters, reconcile differing views, and resolve outstanding issues in the Electoral Act (Repeal and Re-enactment) Amendment Bill, 2026.
His comments came two days after the Senate bowed to widespread public criticism and approved the electronic transmission of results to IReV, while retaining manual collation as a fallback option where technological challenges arise.