Presidential candidate of the Labour Party in the 2023 election, Mr. Peter Obi, on Monday led a group of protesters to the National Assembly, demanding the inclusion of mandatory electronic transmission of results from the polling booth to IREV in Nigeria’s Electoral Act amendment.
The protesters gathered at the entrance of the National Assembly to express their grievances over the removal of clauses mandating electronic transmission of election results.
They carried placards with inscriptions such as: “Akpabio don’t destroy our democracy,” “Say no to electoral fraud,” “Akpabio don’t dare the masses,” “stop betrayal of the ballot,” “The Senate must prioritise citizens over politics,” “The conference committee must protest the integrity of Nigeria’s electronic.” and so on.
Aside from Mr Obi, other human rights activists, including Aisha Yesufu, convener of the Bring Back Our Girls movement, Oruche Ogeamara Precious alias Mama P, Randy Peter, and several others, were present at the protest.
Speaking to journalists at the protest, Mr. Obi asked members of the Nigerian Senate to reconsider the amendment of the Electoral Act to include mandatory electronic transmission of results from the polling booth direct to IREV in order to avoid glitch as it happened in 2023.
Obi said: “The president must hear, we have suffered the danger. That’s what we have suffered before. We don’t want any glitch again. We want things to come back to normal. No more glitch.”
Recall that in the past few days, Nigerians have been intensely debating amendments to the Electoral Act passed by the Senate last Wednesday.
Although several provisions of the law were amended, public attention has largely focused on one controversial clause which is the rejection of electronic transmission of election results from polling units to the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) Result Viewing Portal (IREV).
Public opinion has been largely divided. However, many political parties, politicians and social media users have condemned the amendments and urged lawmakers to reconsider them.
Some civil groups and activists have since been calling for protests at the National Assembly.
A group operating under the banner Enough is Enough was seen on socila media mobilising supporters using the hashtag #OccupyNASS.
Amid the criticism, the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, at a book launch on Saturday admitted that the lawmakers deliberately removed the provision for mandatory real-time electronic transmission of results during the clause-by-clause consideration of the amendment bill.
Mr Akpabio explained that lawmakers took the decision due to concerns that enforcing real-time transmission could lead to legal disputes in the event of network failures during elections.