Highpoints Of Electoral Act Amendment 2026
1. ❌ No provision for mandatory electronic transmission of election results. INEC has discretionary authority to decide
2. ✅ Reduction of the notice period for elections from 365 days to 180 days before the date of the election.
3. ✅ Political parties are now mandated to submit their list of candidates at least 90 days before the election, reduced from 120 days under the 2022 Act.
4. ✅ Increase in the penalty for vote buying, with fines raised to ₦5,000,000.00 from ₦500,000.00.
The Nigerian Senate has passed the
Electoral Act 2022 (Repeal and Re-enactment) Amendment Bill 2026 after a third reading.
However, lawmakers rejected a proposal to amend Clause 60, Subsection 3, which would have made the electronic transmission of election results compulsory.
The rejected amendment sought to require presiding officers of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to upload polling unit results to the IREV portal in real time after completing and signing Form EC8A.
Instead, the Senate retained the existing provision of the Electoral Act, which allows results to be transmitted “in a manner as prescribed by the Commission,” leaving the decision on how results are transmitted to INEC.
In other decisions, the Senate reduced the election notice period from 360 days to 180 days and shortened the deadline for political parties to submit candidates’ lists from 180 days to 90 days before a general election.
Lawmakers also retained the Permanent Voter Card (PVC) as the approved means of voter identification at polling units while adopting the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) for voter accreditation.
The Senate, in passing the bill, also made amendments to a number of the clauses, with the majority of clauses retained as proposed. One of the amendments was the reduction of the timeline for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to publish the notice of election from 360 days to 180 days.
For emphasis, the Senate rejected real-time electronic transmission of election results from polling units to the IReV portal, instead opting to retain the provision in Clause 60 of 2022 Electoral Act, which allows election results to be transmitted in a manner prescribed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
Additionally, the Senate, in its clause-by-clause consideration of the bill, retained the permanent voter card (PVC) as the sole means of voter accreditation, rejecting electronic or alternative identification proposed in Clause 47.