By Kingston Magare 18.2.2026
President Bola Tinubu Wednesday signed the Electoral Act, 2022 (Repeal and Re-Enactment) Bill 2026 into law, with Senate president Godswill Akpabio assuring Nigerians every vote will count.
Nigerians had reacted differently when the Senate dropped electronic transmission of election results, citing poor mobile communications networks connection and unreliable power supply. However, pressure from Nigerians forced the National Assembly to reverse itself and approved e-transmission of result with a caveat of manually collation when there’s no network.
Speaking on the development after the signing of the bill into law Senator Akpabio said: “At the end, Nigerians will benefit a lot from future elections. Every vote will now count.
“We took cognisance of areas where there may not be any network, where there may not be communication capacities and availability.
“We said, since the polling unit result comes in from EC8A, which is signed by the presiding officer, signed by the agents, and signed in the presence of security agents, copies are given to all.
“Then we can use that as the primary source of collation at that unit.
“And then, of course, we transmit it. Even if there is no network at that time, once we step out of there, maybe towards the ward centre or the local government centre, it will drop into the iREV and people will still be able to view.
“The implication of that is that if what is eventually collated at the next centre is different from what is in the iREV, Nigerians will be able to compare whether the election result had been tampered with.
“And for us, that had always been the problem in the country, that once election results leave a polling unit, they will be tampered with or mutilated. That has been eliminated today,” he said.
President Tinubu... signs electoral bill into law.