Former senior officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission have criticised what they described as ambiguities in the Electoral Act, 2026.
They cited provisions on electronic transmission of results, the Smart Card Reader, and the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System as areas that require urgent clarification.
The ex-INEC officials, speaking on Friday in Abuja during a roundtable organised by Yiaga Africa, warned that conflicting provisions on electronic transmission of results could undermine electoral integrity if not addressed.
The discussion was themed, “Electronic Transmission and Electoral Integrity: Safeguarding the Vote under the Electoral Act 2026.”
President Bola Tinubu recently signed the amended Electoral Act 2026 into law, prompting INEC to adjust the 2027 election timetable. The commission said the repeal of the Electoral Act 2022 and the enactment of the new law necessitated a review of the schedule.
Those who spoke at the event included former National Commissioner Festus Okoye, former Resident Electoral Commissioner Mike Igini, former ICT Director Chidi Nwafor, and several civil society leaders.
Okoye, who chaired the Information and Voter Education Committee of the commission, said while the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System remains a highly innovative device, the 2026 Act contains inconsistencies that could create confusion during implementation.
He recalled that the Smart Card Reader was initially introduced through INEC guidelines but was not expressly recognised in the Electoral Act until the 2022 amendment.
According to him, the National Assembly replaced references to the Smart Card Reader with the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System in some sections of the 2026 Act but failed to make the substitution uniformly across the legislation.
Okoye cautioned lawmakers against embedding specific technological names in statutes, arguing that technology evolves rapidly.
“Where BVAS appears in the principal section, Smart Card Reader is still retained in other parts of the Act. The National Assembly needs to clean up the drafting to avoid ambiguity.
“Don’t write a particular technology into the law. Allow the electoral body discretion to adopt appropriate technology at any given time. Each time technology changes, you cannot keep amending the Act,” he said.
Okoye explained that the BIVAS was designed as a multifunctional platform capable of voter registration, biometric accreditation, result upload and even future electronic voting if activated.
He, however, noted that although the device has the capacity for full electronic transmission of results, that function has not been fully operationalised.
A major focus of the dialogue was Section 60 of the 2026 Act, which mandates electronic transmission of polling unit results to the INEC Result Viewing Portal, but includes a proviso that Form EC8A, the manually completed result sheet, remains the primary source for collation and declaration.
Okoye argued that a careful reading of Sections 60 and 65 reveals two distinct transmissions: one to IReV for public viewing and another to the collation system.
He cited Section 155, which defines “transmit” as sending manually or electronically, suggesting that the law provides room for both methods.
Okoye maintained that where discrepancies arise, electronically transmitted results to the collation system should carry greater weight if interpreted strategically.
“I am not factoring IReV into the equation of collation because the Supreme Court has defined it as a viewing portal. But the law also provides for transmission to the next level of collation, and we must interrogate that carefully,” he said.
Former INEC ICT Director, Engr. Chidi Nwafor, traced Nigeria’s technological electoral reforms to early digitised voter registration efforts in 2003 and the eventual introduction of biometric systems under former INEC Chairman, Attahiru Jega.
The former officials urged lawmakers to urgently harmonise the provisions of the Act to eliminate ambiguities and safeguard the integrity of future elections.