Senate Pushes for Online Results Posting to Enhance Electoral Integrity

The Senate has announced its intention to make it compulsory for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to publish election results on the internet.

This was revealed by Senator Sharafadeen Alli, the chairman of the Senate Committee on Electoral Matters, in an interview with Channels TV on Tuesday.

He explained that the existing law does not oblige INEC to post results online, but the committee is working on changing the law.

He said, “That is one of the things that we are going to do. The current law does not make it obligatory for INEC to post results; that is what the court has said.

But as we are going forward, it is going to be obligatory.”He also said that the committee proposed other electoral reforms, such as settling all pre-election issues before the election and improving election technology.“We looked at elections and election petitions.

In terms of legislation about election petitions, we think all pre-election issues were settled before the election.“We are also looking at a situation where election petitions are concluded before swearing in.

“We are thinking of setting a time limit for filing and concluding election petitions so that someone will not be sworn in, that is what led us into having these off-cycle elections. There would have been no need for it if we were able to conclude election petitions before the swearing-in.

“We are looking at the development of technology and improvement on technology because a lot of Nigerians were disappointed when the use of the IReV didn’t work, but going forward we will try to ensure INEC do something about that,” he said.