INEC lacks capacity to conduct e-voting – Senate

The Senate said on Thursday the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) lacks the capacity to conduct e-voting at present.

The upper chamber also clarified that electronic transmission of election results in real time does not translate to e-voting, contrary to insinuations in some quarters.

The Chairman, Senate Ad hoc Committee on the Review of the 2026 Electoral Bill, Senator Adeniyi Adegbonmire, made the clarifications when he appeared on a programme in Abuja.

Adegbonmire equally maintained that INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) was not an e-voting platform.

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He said: “It is a platform where the election results that have been manually counted and declared at the polling units are uploaded and publicised.”

The senator explained the difference between electronic transmission of election results in real time and e-voting system.

The Senate had set up the ad hoc committee to review the report of its Committee on Electoral Matters, harmonise divergent views and address grey areas identified during the exercise.

On the decision of the Senate, Adegbonmire explained that Nigeria had not transitioned to an e-voting system, contrary to what some people had insinuated or reported by the media.

He added: “People need to understand what real-time means. Real-time transmission can only happen if 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.

“This is the misconception that the media has brought into play. The provision you keep emphasising says the presiding officer will first fill the result manually in Form EC8A.

“It is the Form EC8A that has been filled 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.”

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