The Senate failed to pass the Electoral Act Repeal and Enactment Bill 2026 on Thursday, preferring to defer it till Tuesday, next week.
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The decision was reached after about three hours of an executive session held to discuss the details of the new bill.
Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, who presided over the session, simply announced that a small committee had been set up to distill all the views expressed by senators at the closed-door meeting.
The committee, which is chaired by Senator Niyi Adegonmire (APC, Ondo-Central), will report back to the plenary on Tuesday, the same day lawmakers are expected to pass the bill.
The bill was originally slated for passage on Wednesday, January 28.
However, it was shifted to Thursday, January 29 to allow senators to study the details.
On resumption of plenary on Thursday, the Senate went into an executive session to discuss the bill.
Upon rising from the session, senators again assigned their views to the Adegonmire committee to distill them and revert next week.
There were indications more suggestions and recommendations might have been made into the report on the bill, a reason the mini committee was raised to summarise them and incorporate them into the bill before the clause-by-clause consideration in open plenary next week.
The House of Representatives had passed the bill before proceeding on the Christmas and New Year break last December.
The electronic transmission of results from polling units to INEC Result Viewing Portal (iREV) is one of the leading recommendations in the report, as passed by the Green Chamber.
For instance, a new sub-section (3) on page 45 of the bill provides that “INEC shall electronically transmit election results from each polling unit to IREV portal in real time and such transmission shall be done simultaneously with physical collation of results.”
A new sub-section (2) was introduced to Section 77 to penalise Presiding Officers who fail to sign and stamp ballot papers and results announced by them, while Section 47(2) and (3) were also amended by substituting the words “smart card reader” with the words “Bimodal Voter Accreditation System.”
Vote buying also has increased punishment from a fine of N500, 000 to N5 million.
Being a joint committee report, the Senate is expected to concur with the House.
However, in line with parliamentary tradition, if there are differences after the Senate must have passed the bill, the two chambers will appoint a conference committee to harmonise the report before final adoption and transmission to President Bola Tinubu for his assent or withholding of it.
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