*As Civil Society Rejects Transmission Clause, Calls For Fresh Amendment
Andrew Mamedu, Country Director of Action Aid Nigeria, and Farooq Ibrahim, Africa Program Coordinator of Yiaga Africa, have said they were not surprised that President Bola Tinubu signed the Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2026 into law, noting that the speed of the signing — within 24 hours — confirmed that the executive and legislature developed and passed the bill together.
Both civil society leaders spoke on Arise TV News Night on Wednesday, hours after President Tinubu signed the bill into law, expressing concerns about the transmission clause while announcing plans for a fresh amendment.
Mamedu stated that civil society expected the President to sign the bill.
“99% yesterday I think I said somewhere that 99% chances that the president is going to sign it. So the president did not surprise us. There were no surprises and this is further verified with the speed upon which it is signed. This is less than 24 hours, 120 something pages and in less than 24 hours,” Mamedu stated.
Mamedu explained the normal process for presidential assent.
“Once a bill comes out it goes to the president for assent. The president has got a team. The minimum is the Attorney General must go through it and it takes his time. That’s why the law allows the president up to 30 days to either sign it or send it back to the assembly.
“INEC is supposed to have a say, the Minister of Finance is supposed to also look at it and say are there financial implications, can we fund those financial implications that are coming up from the bill, before the president then goes ahead to sign or not to sign.
“But it looks like both the executive and the legislators drafted, developed this bill together, debated it together and at the end of the day passed it together and of course signed it together. And this is all against the overwhelming majority of Nigerians, particularly one clause.”
Mamedu announced that civil society is rejecting the transmission clause.
“The most important part of the bill still remains the Senate version. So the question is what do we do about that? For us it’s very simple — civil society, we are rejecting that particular aspect.
“It’s okay it’s been signed, it’s an act, it’s a law right now. But we can do an amendment. As early as tomorrow we can send an amendment. A senator can raise an amendment, a House member, even the president can raise an amendment to the current act on that particular clause.”
Mamedu acknowledged some positive aspects of the new law.
“There are beautiful parts of the bill. One of them is citizens can actually now print their voters card online. You can go to the website and print your voters card and then use it. So those long queues we have will be eliminated. So it’s not a total knock for the bill.”
Farooq Ibrahim of Yiaga Africa expressed concern about the credibility implications.
“At the core of the advocacy by citizens groups and civil society organizations is to ensure that we have a more credible process, a more legitimate process, a process that citizens can trust and have more confidence in. And a lot of this is hinged on the electronic transmission of results.
“Unfortunately, what was signed into law today by the president contains that proviso that was passed in the Senate version that says where electronic transmission fails we will revert to the Form EC8A. The implication of this is that we are almost going back, we’re taking a step back, we’re retrogressing in the credibility of this process.
“It almost seems like we have taken one step forward but maybe two or three or four or five steps back.”
Ibrahim highlighted the legal confusion the proviso creates.
“It also creates some more confusion around one, the hierarchy and the legitimacy if it goes to court. Because it begs the question that if electronic transmission fails, which takes precedence or which takes hierarchy — is it the online, the electronic version, or is it the manual version?
“A lot of this advocacy for a credible election has been that we need to use more technology to ensure that there’s credibility of the process, to ensure that when we go to the collation process, if there are any alterations to the results that come from the various polling units, we can go back to what is on IREV, what has been electronically transmitted.”
Mamedu explained where election manipulation typically occurs.
“Where our challenge is — the biggest challenge has been from the issues of transmission. When we finish counting our vote, like the president rightly said, we will count it manually. Machine is not going to do that. Once we finish counting it and it’s 520, between when we transmit the result with the form, take the result with the form from the polling unit to the collation centre, 520 turns to 5,200. The magic happens.
“So we’re saying how do we eliminate that? And we have a machine which we use for accreditation with or without network. It is time-stamped. It’s been tested and we’ve used this where we had 93% accuracy result transmission and we didn’t have issues with that in by-off elections.”
Mamedu recalled the court’s previous ruling on IREV.
“If you go to court — because we have been once bitten, twice shy — we’ve gone through this process before and the court says sorry we cannot accept it because IREV is not encoded in the law. And that’s why we went through this whole process to make sure that it’s encoded and we follow it all till the end.”
Ibrahim addressed concerns about Section 84 on candidate nomination.
“The greatest concern in this clause is for political parties because this is a clause that speaks directly to political parties and how it is going to affect the candidate selection process within the political parties as well as the internal party dynamics.
“The Supreme Court has ruled one way. We have the electoral law now that has mandated that primaries shall be conducted either through direct primaries or through consensus.
“It seems like members of the National Assembly probably did not pay as much attention to this clause as they should have, or in some sort of political arrangement to remove power from some certain individuals in the political parties to ensure that with the direct primaries all the members of the political parties are able to determine who becomes the candidate.”
Mamedu outlined plans to push for an amendment without affecting INEC’s timetable.
“We will probably not tamper with the 300 days. Let that start counting. However, the particular clause we’re not comfortable with, particularly the one around transmission of results, we could just go with that alone. Other aspects of the act as it stands becomes law and INEC can start running with that.
“You don’t need to operationalise this until close to the election. So why don’t we — and of course we have seen the president sign a bill in 24 hours. So we can also get it in 48 hours and get the president to sign.”
Mamedu announced that civil society groups are continuing their meetings.
“Civil society, we are having meetings tomorrow. We are continuing our conversation and all of that. But citizens should be ready to come out. This is about our own system.”
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