Less than 24 hours after widespread public outrage over its decision to remove mandatory real-time transmission of election results, the Senate has begun a damage-control effort, insisting it never opposed electronic transmission in the first place.
On Thursday, the Senate Minority Caucus claimed the upper chamber did not reject electronic transmission of results during the passage of the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill, contradicting what Nigerians watched unfold during plenary on Wednesday.
The backlash followed the Senate’s removal of a clause that would have required polling unit results to be uploaded immediately to INEC’s Result Viewing (IReV) portal — a safeguard widely regarded as critical to preventing post-election manipulation.
Earlier, Senate President Godswill Akpabio dismissed reports of a rollback as “misleading,” arguing that lawmakers merely retained the existing provision allowing electronic transmission “in a manner prescribed by INEC.” Critics counter that this same wording previously enabled opaque result handling and manipulation at collation centres.
Former Senate Minority Leader Enyinnaya Abaribe later reinforced the Senate’s revised position, claiming lawmakers actually approved electronic transmission — even in real time.
“Reports suggesting that the Senate rejected electronic transmission of results are incorrect,” Abaribe told journalists. “The Senate did not — I repeat, did not — reject electronic transmission as provided for in the 2022 Electoral Act.”
However, the controversy is not about electronic transmission in general.
What lawmakers removed was the compulsory, real-time upload of polling unit results to the public IReV portal — the central issue Nigerians protested.
Abaribe argued that electronic transmission was agreed upon during committee stages and that confusion arose during plenary due to noise and movement in the chamber.
Observers note, however, that the final version of the bill deliberately avoids explicit language mandating real-time uploads to IReV, reverting instead to vague provisions that allow results to pass through traditional collation channels — where alterations have historically occurred.
In effect, the Senate preserved electronic transmission in theory while stripping away the transparency mechanism that makes it tamper-proof in practice.
That contradiction lay at the heart of Wednesday’s outrage.
Abaribe cited joint committee meetings, retreats with INEC, consultations with civil society groups, and a closed-door Senate session as evidence of consensus on electronic transmission.
Yet despite these processes, the final bill still dropped the mandatory real-time upload clause Nigerians demanded.
He also disclosed that harmonisation with the House of Representatives has not begun because the Senate has yet to adopt its Votes and Proceedings — a procedural step required before reconciliation.
The Senate’s insistence that “nothing was rejected” emerged only after intense public criticism framed its action as a deliberate attempt to keep elections vulnerable to manipulation.
INEC has already demonstrated that Nigeria has the infrastructure for instant result uploads. The dispute was never about technology.
It was about whether results should be locked immediately, beyond political interference.
On Wednesday, the Senate removed that safeguard.
On Thursday, it began insisting nothing had changed.
Regardless of the reframing now underway, the amended bill no longer compels polling unit results to be instantly uploaded to the IReV portal — the single reform that would decisively block manipulation between polling units and collation centres.
For many Nigerians, the evolving narrative only reinforces the conclusion drawn from Wednesday’s vote:
When faced with a clear choice between airtight transparency and the old flexible system, the Senate chose flexibility — and is now attempting to rebrand it as reform.
