The Senate has clarified that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) Result viewing portal (IReV) is not an electronic voting platform.
Adeniyi Adegbonmire, chairman of the Senate ad hoc panel on
the review of the 2026 electoral bill, spoke during an appearance on Arise News
on Thursday.
Adegbonmire also dismissed claims that lawmakers scrapped
the portal for the 2027 general election.
The senator said the upper chamber never resolved to
discontinue the use of IReV, stressing that the portal remains a platform for
publishing results already declared at polling units.
“The senate never said INEC should not use IReV for the 2027
elections,” he said.
“What people must understand is that IReV is not an e-voting
platform. It is software developed by INEC to publicise results that have been
manually counted and declared at polling units.”
The lawmaker explained that real-time transmission of
results is not the same as electronic voting, noting that Nigeria has not yet
adopted an e-voting system.
“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,” he said.
He added that votes are still cast and counted manually,
adding that only the final results recorded on Form EC8A are uploaded to the
IReV portal.
“You must first manually write out the figure. After you
have written out the figure at the polling unit, then you can upload, transfer
or transmit, depending on the nomenclature we want to use,” Adegbonmire said.
“When you talk about transmission, it has nothing to do with
the sanctity of the voting process. It is not IReV or BVAS that counts ballots.
Vote count is manually done.”
Adegbonmire, who represents Ondo Central, said the Senate’s
review of the electoral bill was aimed at harmonising divergent views and
addressing grey areas, rather than eliminating the use of IReV.
The senator cautioned against what he described as
misinterpretation of legislative proceedings, urging the media to exercise care
in reporting issues relating to electoral reforms.
“If we are not careful, the smallest thing will spark an
issue,” he said.
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