Electoral Act 2026 and FCT Area Council polls

 

2026 is set to be a year of politics and politicking. On February 17, National Assembly passed the harmonised version of Electoral Bill 2026 and in an unprecedented manner, without recourse to the Office of Attorney General and Minister of Justice for legal opinion, President Bola Tinubu signed the bill last Wednesday, February 18, 2026. It will be important to educate Nigerians on some of the salient provisions even as we await the gazette copy and wide circulation of our sixth electoral act (2001, 2002, 2006, 2010, 2022 and now 2026) in this Fourth Republic.

Last Saturday, the Independent National Electoral Commission conducted yet another batch of elections. The commission held elections into the six Area Councils of the Federal Capital Territory as well as bye elections into two state constituencies in   Rivers State (Ahoada East II and Khana II) and two state constituency in Kano (Ungogo and Kano Municipal). Lest I forget, INEC had on Friday February 13, 2026 announced dates for the 2027 general elections. The Commission said presidential and National Assembly elections will hold on Saturday, February 20.while the governorship and state Assembly elections are scheduled for Saturday, March 6, 2027. These dates will likely change in view of the new electoral act provision.  On February 5, INEC announced the registration of two new political parties Democratic Leadership Alliance and Nigeria Democratic Congress to bring the number of registered political parties in Nigeria from 19 to 21.

Ahead of the final passage of the 2026 electoral bill, Nigerians were treated to all sorts of drama on the floor of both House of Representatives and the Senate. Opposition party lawmakers were insistent on passing the clause 60(3) which has to do with electronic transmission of result to the INEC Result Viewing Portal better known as IREV in real time and without a fallback position if the real time transmission is impossible.  A section of Nigeria’s civil society also marched on the National Assembly to canvass for similar position. Tempers flared, some lawmakers staged a walkout in the House of Reps calling the ruling All Progressives Congress ole (thief). At the end of the day, while minority had their say, majority had their way. By the time the Senate voted on the clause, only 15 senators want that section without a proviso while 55 voted to have a proviso that if the electronic transmission failed, the manual result should be used for the collation.

I can’t see the rationale behind the pressure mounted by those who insisted on real time transmission of election results. The new act never abolished manual collation of results which takes place across different layers from Ward to Local Government to State and national level in the case of presidential election. When INEC introduced the IREV in 2020, it was meant to enhance transparency of the result management process so that those who may not be at the Polling Unit but desirous of knowing how the election panned out there can log in into the IREV portal to download the result.

The portal also helps those who set up situation rooms and wanting to have a parallel vote tabulation to do so. However, as I have had the privilege of educating Nigerians on several media platforms, IREV is not a result collation dashboard or portal as collation is still primarily a manual exercise. So why the hullabaloo of real time transmission. What does real time mean in terms of hours and days? Are the opposition lawmakers saying that if INEC is unable to upload all the results in say two hours, that election is null and void? I will enjoin all political parties wanting to contest forthcoming elections in Ekiti and Osun governorship elections and 2027 General Elections to place premium on deploying well trained and motivated Polling Agents across all the Constituencies where they intend to vie for elections.

It’s good that electronic transmission of results has been given legal backing but credible evidence will come more from Polling Agents who have been given enormous powers to follow through the distribution of election materials, critically observe the accreditation, voting, sorting, counting, announcement of results and also observing the collation process. Polling Agents are mandatorily to be given official copy of the announced Polling Unit results as well as the final collated results. Polling Agents can object to a voter being allowed to vote and can ask for the recount of votes at PUs The law allows them to take pictures and do video recording of what they observed at the PUs. Their written and oral testimonies are tenable at election tribunals and courts.  

Aside from the ruckus of e-transmission, some of the salient provisions of the 2026 Electoral Act include the reduction in the number of days for INEC to give Notice of Election from 360 days to 300 days; removal of Indirect primary as a mode of candidate selection leaving Direct and Consensus mode of party primaries; INEC fund  for election to now be given not later than six months from the initial 12 months provided in 2022 Electoral Act; presidential candidates to now spend maximum of N10 billion as their election expenses while governorship candidates are to spend N3 billion;  given the shortening of days for Notice of Election and candidate nomination, the 150 days of campaigns in 2022 electoral act will now reduce.

On Saturday, February 21, 2026, seventeen political parties fielded candidates across the 6 Area councils and 62 wards. In FCT there are 2,822 PUs and 1,680,315 Registered Voters. The Nigeria Police deployed 25,000 officers and men while the Nigeria Security and Civil Defence Corps deployed 4,000 personnel. I was on several media channels to discuss the polls. They include Radio Now 95.3 FM, Lagos, NTA Abuja Channel 5, News Central TV, Silverbird TV, TVC News, Channels TV, Real 99.3 FM, Abuja and Omalicha 91.1 FM, Owerri. It so happens that, as usual, the election was a mixed grill of the good, the bad and the ugly.

On the positive side, there was huge enthusiasm by FCT voters to collect their Permanent Voters Card. About 94 per cent of registered voters collected their PVCs across the six Area Councils of Abaji, Kwali, Gwagwalada, Kuje, Abuja Municipal and Bwari. The party primaries and nomination of candidates went smoothly. Campaigns were held without any major disruptions or violence. The election itself was largely peaceful save for one ugly incident where an African Democratic Congress Polling Agent Musa Abubakar was allegedly murdered at the Gwagwa polling unit while trying to resist rigging. It is also noteworthy that accreditation of voters with Bimodal Voter Accreditation System device worked perfectly while all the elections were concluded on the first ballot without recourse to supplementary elections. The electronic transmission of results was also achieved. INEC said as at 2:00pm on Sunday, February 22, the upload of polling unit results to the IREV had reached 93%.

On the other hand, the election recorded incidents of voter inducement. Economic and Financial Crimes Commission reportedly arrested 20 persons for vote trading. EFCC said “The suspects were arrested across the FCT, for offences ranging from vote buying, vote selling to obstruction of officers to the tune of N17,218,700”. Most significant however were late commencement of voting and voter apathy. In a statement issued on Sunday, February 22, 2026, INEC said “According to the Commission’s Election Operations Dashboard, 45% of polling units opened for voting as at 8:30am, while all polling units were confirmed open by 10:00am on Election Day.” On voter apathy, INEC said “While the Commission remains concerned about voter apathy, it notes a significant improvement compared to the previous election. In the 2022 Area Council election, a total of 148,685 voters were recorded, representing 9.4% of registered voters. In the current election, over 239,210 voters voted, representing approximately 15% of the 1,680,315 total registered voters in the FCT.”

As I said on several media platforms, people are “voting with their feet” rather than with their hands for the following reasons: No visible dividends of democracy from past Area Council administrators. INEC late redistribution of voters into new polling units.  Movement restriction in FCT from 8pm on Friday to 6pm on Saturday.  Late commencement of voting. Non-expansion of voting rights. For instance, no early voting, no diasporan voting, no voting for prisoners, no voting by proxy and no mail-in ballot as obtained in many other democracies. Anyway, Ekiti and Osun off-cycle governorship elections beckons on June 20 and August 8, 2026. Will Prof. Joash Amupitan’s INEC better their last Saturday’s performance? Time will tell!

I.G: @jideojong