Executive Director of YIAGA Africa, Samson Itodo, has said the Senate has betrayed the trust of Nigerians and made rubbish of all the gains they have made.
Itodo said this on Wednesday when he appeared as a guest in an interview on Arise Television.
Itodo was reacting to the Senate rejecting real-time electronic transmission of election results, warning that it is a dangerous retreat.
Recall that the Senate on Wednesday turned down a proposed change to Clause 60, Subsection 3, of the Electoral Amendment Bill that aimed to compel the electronic transmission of election results.
Meanwhile, barley three hours after the announcement, Senate President Godswill Akpabio clarified that the Senate did not reject the electronic transmission of election results during consideration of the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill.
Itodo, reacting to the development, said, “The Senate has betrayed the trust of Nigerians and made rubbish of all the gains we have made. This is a dangerous retreat from some of the lofty reforms that were introduced by the 2022 Electoral Act.
“I completely disagree with the Senate president. He’s just being clever by half, because what he is saying is that the ruling of the Supreme Court in the 2023 elections, they were very clear that electronic coalition or transmission was unknown to the law that INEC cannot, by virtue of its guidelines, introduce electronic transmission.
“And so what the National Assembly did, particularly the two committees in the National Assembly was to take that judicial pronouncement and update the law, because when the extant law says it shall be by a procedure determined by INEC, INEC went ahead in its guideline, determined the procedure, but the court now said, no, you have to insert it in the law and the report before them, because I was part of the technical committee that was part of this entire process.
“What the House passed was that electronic transmission will be part of this process. In fact, the report also mentioned the iREV. So I think that the senate president is lying to Nigerians, because that’s not what was provided in the report. It was clear electronic transmission of result.
“But that’s not also the only thing. One of the things that the Senate has also done is introduce some draconian provisions that will undermine the preparations for the 2027 elections, especially logistics. What they have done, they’ve compressed the time frame.
“If this is the outcome of a thorough job, then I think that the Senate owes Nigerians a lot of apologies.”
