Electoral Act: Nigeria not prepared for real-time electronic result transmission — Ex-INEC Commissioner

A former National Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Dr. Mustapha Lecky, has said Nigeria lacks the technical capacity to implement real-time electronic transmission of election results.

Dr. Lecky made the assertion on Friday while speaking on Channels Television’s Politics Today, against the backdrop of renewed controversy surrounding the Senate’s rejection of electronic transmission provisions in the Electoral Act Amendment Bill.

IDOMA VOICE reports that the Senate, on Wednesday, voted against a proposed amendment to Clause 60, subsection 3 of the bill, which aimed to make the electronic transmission of election results mandatory.

Reacting to the development, Lecky argued that discussions about instant, live transmission of results were premature.

According to him, such a system can only be justified where electronic voting is fully in place.

“It doesn’t make sense to talk about real-time transmission of results as they happen when we do not practice electronic voting anywhere in the country. Nigeria is not ready for that yet,” he said.

He explained that electronic voting and electronic transmission must work hand in hand, noting that the current manual voting process makes the argument for instant transmission unnecessary.

“Voters still use paper ballots and drop them in ballot boxes. The votes are then counted openly, one after the other, and sorted by political parties for everyone to see.

In that context, the argument for electronic transmission is baseless. We don’t need it,” Lecky added.