Piqued by the controversies associated with the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV) and delays through court processes on electoral matters in the 2023 elections, Senator Sharafadeen Alli, Chairman Senate Committee on Electoral Act, said the Senate may be contemplating a wholesale review of the 2022 Electoral Act and amend the legislation to make electronic transmissions
Piqued by the controversies associated with the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV) and delays through court processes on electoral matters in the 2023 elections, Senator Sharafadeen Alli, Chairman Senate Committee on Electoral Act, said the Senate may be contemplating a wholesale review of the 2022 Electoral Act and amend the legislation to make electronic transmissions of election result mandatory.
Reviewing the conduct of the 2023 general elections on Channels TV’s Sunrise Daily, on Tuesday, Senator Sharafadeen Alli noted that though the elections of this year were better than the ones that came before them but canvassed further amendments to improve the process. He said that the country’s electoral system is now more transparent and reliable as a result of the introduction of the BVAS.
Another area the new legislation may look at is how to abridge litigations arising from the electoral process and ensure that they are concluded before the swearing-in of a winner
The Senate, after its retreat in Akwa Ibom last month, reached a consensus for a need to mandate the electronic transmission of election results, amidst other issues around the election. Subsequently, the lawmakers set a committee to attend to electoral reform ahead of the 2027 polls.
Admitting that one of the loopholes in the Electoral Act 2022 was the exclusion of electronic transmission of results, which has attracted criticism from both local and international stakeholders after the poll, the Senator insisted that the lawmakers are already working to ensure that electronic transmission would be prioritised in the new law.
However, he insisted that despite the gaps in the conduct of the polls, the introduction of BVAS played a major role in the history of Nigeria’s election as a game changer, making room for transparency during the election.
He concluded that the Senate committee is already working with the electoral commission and other stakeholders as early as possible to ensure that all actions are implemented across the board ahead of the coming general elections to achieve a credible election in 2027.
He said “I must say this, there can not be perfect legislation after every legislation, you see gaps and that is when power that is given to the judiciary will tap into this clause. We must praise the 9th Assembly under Senator Lawan for coming out bold to pass the Electoral Act, it is the fundamental change in our electoral system. And whatever we say on every legislation, there has been an improvement on the previous ones, and we say things are getting better, there are errors there as well.
“BVAS machine is like a game changer unlike the card reader, card reader, when it does not work, we will fill the incident forms and we knew we used that for. But as soon as you bypass the BVAS this time around, the election is null and void.
“That is one of the things that we are going to be doing going forward. Under the current law, it is not mandatory for INEC to upload, that is what the courts have said, enter the law, under the current law it is not but as we are going on forward it is going to be mandatory, that is one of the things that we are going to do. It is just to ask INEC to make sure we improve our technology and ensure that the thing is there.
“One other thing we also must look at is that you know that after the first election INEC had to go back to say that they wanted to configure the machines before the gubernatorial elections. we are looking at the situation where we will ask INEC to improve on it to ensure that the machine can store data and that whenever you want to retrieve you will not have to go and reconfigure and whenever you get to court there will be anything there again
