The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said it has since 2018 proven to the National Assembly its capacity to electronically transmit election results across all parts of Nigeria, including from remote areas.

“We have gone very far in terms of deepening the use of technology in the electoral process and the mobile operators have assured us in 2018 that they have carried out similar things for other agencies that this one will not be a big issue,” INEC’s spokesman Festus Okoye said on Channels Saturday.

Mr Okoye said election chiefs from INEC have repeatedly told both Senate and House committees on electoral matters that they have sufficient technical capacity to transmit results via communication networks in order to reduce delays often associated with physically transporting results from polling units to collation centres at local, state and federal levels.

INEC admitted that the process of physically transporting election materials, especially from remote communities with infrastructure or security challenges, was dangerous and often linked to ballot thefts and other irregularities.

But after months of consideration about whether or not the country should eliminate a crucial channel of election rigging and allow electronic transmission of results, lawmakers of the ruling All Progressives Congress exclusively rejected the proposal in the Senate on Wednesday.

The APC senators said there was no capacity for INEC to transmit results via electronic channels throughout the country, leaving the final decision to the NCC. The move was rejected by opposition PDP senators, who voted entirely in support of electronic transmission of results as a needed improvement to a process long marred by irregularities.

On Thursday, APC lawmakers in the House also followed their Senate counterparts to reject deployment of electronic transmission, leading PDP lawmakers to stage a walkout of the parliament session in anger.

But INEC maintained that results can be transmitted over networks without if lawmakers could summon the political will to grant such permission in the Electoral Act.

“This particular commission has been testrunning different technological solutions in the electoral process for quite some time and looking at some of the elections organised since 2020, you can see that we have uploaded the results of 22 elections including state elections, House of Representatives elections, senatorial elections and governorship election into our central portal where the public has an opportunity of viewing them.

“These elections that we have uploaded cut across all the six geo-political zones, for instance in the North-Central, we uploaded results of five elections, in the North-West, we uploaded from five different elections, for North-East, we uploaded results from three different elections. In the South-East, we did three, in the South-West, four, while in the South-South we did six. Some of these places have challenges of security, some have challenges of terrain.

“We have uploaded results from very remote areas, even from areas where you have to use human carriers to access, we have uploaded results from those areas.

“The commission was also invited and we made our position clear, which has been clear and consistent: that this particular commission is irrevocably committed to deepening the use of technology in the electoral process and we want powers to enable us to deploy technology in the electoral process,” Mr Okoye said.

The official also said INEC held meetings with the NCC and both agencies demonstrated readiness for electronic transmission ahead of 2023 elections.