The Global President of the Ijaw National Congress (INC), Prof. Benjamin Okaba, has criticised the Senate over its decision on electronic transmission of election results, describing it as a rejection of accountability and transparency in Nigeria’s electoral process.
Speaking in an interview on Friday, Okaba said the Red Chamber’s action amounted to a refusal to guarantee the sanctity and finality of votes cast by citizens during elections.
According to him, lawmakers turned down a simple but powerful safeguard—ensuring that votes recorded openly at polling units remain unchanged throughout the collation process.
“What the Senate rejected was the idea that the vote cast by a citizen in the open should be the same vote that is counted at the end of the process,” Okaba said.
He argued that the decision has shifted the responsibility for credible elections away from the legislature and back to voters, party agents and civil society at polling units and collation centres across the country.
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“The struggle for credible elections has now moved from the Senate floor back to the streets and polling units,” he added.
Okaba stressed that the issue before the Senate was not a technical debate about servers, internet connectivity or the cost of technology, but a deeper question of political will.
“The real question was whether Nigeria is ready to permanently restrain the entrenched culture of electoral fraud that has plagued our democracy for decades. Sadly, the answer given was no,” he said.
He described the Senate’s decision as a retreat from electoral integrity at a critical moment, warning that lawmakers chose opaque processes over transparency.
According to him, rather than strengthening democratic institutions, the Senate opted to preserve the influence of old political practices.
“This is not surprising, but it is deeply disappointing. The Senate had a clear choice between reinforcing democracy or protecting the old order. They chose the latter,” Okaba said.
He explained that mandatory electronic transmission of results would have ensured that once polling unit results were signed and announced, they would be immediately uploaded to the INEC Results Viewing Portal (IReV), creating a permanent public record and eliminating manipulation during collation.
“The aim is to dismantle the corrupt system of result alteration at ward, local government and state levels,” he said.
Instead, he noted, the Senate retained discretionary transmission, leaving the process weak and dependent on the judgment of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
“This was not accidental; it was strategic. By making transmission optional, the law offers no solid protection,” he added.
Okaba said the implications of the decision were far-reaching, describing it as a major governance failure and a missed opportunity to strengthen electoral credibility.
He referenced concerns raised by civil society groups, including Yiaga Africa, that the Senate’s move would weaken safeguards put in place by the 2022 Electoral Act and undermine public trust.
He further noted that opposition parties, including the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the Labour Party, have condemned the decision as retrogressive and biased in favour of entrenched political interests.
“They argue—rightly—that it protects the powerful and sustains the architecture of rigging,” he said.
Reacting to claims by Senate President Godswill Akpabio that the Senate did not reject electronic transmission, Okaba dismissed the explanation as misleading.
“They didn’t need to reject it outright. They simply weakened it. Keeping the language while stripping it of legal force is not a defence; it is an admission,” he said.
Looking ahead to the 2027 general elections, Okaba warned that the country is heading into another election cycle under fragile legal provisions that have already damaged public confidence.
“This decision worsens voter apathy, especially among young and reform-minded Nigerians. It signals that the system is not ready to change,” he said.
He added that without firm legal backing, electoral integrity now depends largely on the resilience of INEC leadership and the vigilance of party agents and observers nationwide—an arrangement he described as risky and unsustainable.
