The Senate says the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) lacks the capacity to conduct e-voting in Nigeria.
The Senate also clarified that electronic transmission of election results in real time does not translate to e-voting, as being peddled in some quarters.
The Chairman of the Senate Ad hoc Panel to Review the 2026 Electoral Bill, Adeniyi Adegbonmire (SAN), made the clarifications in Abuja on Thursday, February 12, 2026.
Adegbonmire equally maintained that INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) is not an e-voting platform.
“It is a platform where the election results that have been manually counted and declared at the polling units are uploaded and publicised,” he said.
Adegbonmire said Nigeria had not transitioned to an e-voting system, contrary to what some people had insinuated or what some media platforms had reported.
The lawmaker said: “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.”
Adegbonmire, who is the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Judiciary, Human Rights and Legal Matters, added that the misconceptions about IReV should be corrected, considering its implications for the country’s peaceful co-existence.
He said: “IReV is not a voting platform. Rather, it is a platform meant to publicise election results already declared by the presiding officers at polling units across the federation.
“It is important, first of all, to understand what IReV does because there is a lot of misconceptions about it or deliberate misrepresentation of what it stands for.
“The Senate never said INEC should not use IReV for the 2027 elections. So, what is IReV? It is a software developed by INEC to publicise results by INEC.
“IReV is not an e-voting platform as some people think. This is the misinformation some people are peddling.” See more