The Nigerian Senate dashed the hopes of millions of stakeholders on Thursday when it embarked on a rigmarole at a time action was needed. The chamber had gone on its Christmas and New Year break and was expected to hit the ground running when it resumed on January 27, a date that appeared quite late in the year for a chamber that has several unfinished and pressing workloads. There is the Constitution Amendment Bill, the budget 2026, and then the Electoral Act Amendment Bill 2025. The three, among other bills and assignments, carry timelines that have implications for the Nigerian state.
In accordance with Section 28 (1) of the Electoral Act 2022, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) is required to publish Notice of Elections not later than 360 days before the next election. If we stick with the provisions of that Act, the next general elections would be due in February 2027. The 2023 presidential and National Assembly elections were held on February 25, while the governorship and Houses of Assembly elections were held on March 18 of that year. So, going by the existing law, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) should be getting ready to announce the Notice of Elections for the 2027 polls as we speak. In a setting where institutions are alive to their duties, amendments to the existing Electoral Act should have been concluded in the last quarter of 2025. That would have enabled the political parties, civil society, and the citizens familiarise themselves with the law that would guide the next elections.
While the House of Representatives claimed it had passed the bill through the Third Reading on December 23, 2025, it deferred some sections for further consideration. According to reports from the Thursday plenary session, the Reps had slated Sections 3(3); 60(3);62; 75, 77(4); 82; 87(2vi); and 87(3v) for recommittal and passage on January 29, but the absence of the Chairman, Rules and Business Committee stalled the exercise. So, in practical terms, the House of Representatives cannot be said to have passed the amendment bill when it still has lots of work to do on at least eight sections of the bill.
But the rigmarole by the Senate is particularly striking. The lawmakers in the Red Chamber, who started the amendment process at the same time as their colleagues in the Green Chamber, appeared lost along the line as it emerged that they got caught in some unidentifiable vicissitudes that slowed their pace. The Senate Committee on Electoral Matters submitted its report to the chamber last year, but it could not be processed for the mandatory clause-by-clause consideration that would guarantee the Third Reading. What did we see in the Senate on Thursday? Instead of the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, taking the chamber through the Third Reading, he first diverted to hold an executive session because of the “sensitive” nature of the bill, after which a seven-man panel was set up to collate the views of senators on the proposed amendment. You want to wonder about what exactly was done at the public hearing stage, and what was the job of the committee’s consultants.
I do not know what the Senate President meant by his decision to set up the Senator Adams Oshiomhole/Waziri Tambuwal committee on this matter, but what is known to the Senate and parliamentary process is the First, Second, and Third Readings of a bill. While the First Reading is merely procedural, it gets the bill ready for publication in the National Assembly Journal, and the general principles of the bills are considered during the Second Reading. If a bill passes that critical stage, it is then slated for public hearing, after which the standing committee mandated to coordinate the legislative process would submit its report to the chamber for the final stage, the Third Reading. Setting up another seven-man committee and embarking on closed or executive sessions are clear overdrives that speak to nothing other than undue delay.
To justify the delay, the President of the Senate, Godswill Akpabio, had told his colleagues on Thursday: “This is a very important bill, because we’re about to go into elections. So, if we rush it, we‘ll meet at the tribunal. So, if we do it right, then all Nigerians will smile that we have free and fair elections.” We may have to pray that the unfolding drama would not grant us Fela Anikulapo’s “Confusion Break Bone,” and that Nigerians would be able to afford a smile as a result of what Akpabio and his colleagues would serve the people.
Well, those versed in the 1999 Constitution (as amended) could argue that the Senate and the House of Representatives can easily hide under the constitutional allowance as contained in Section 60, which enables the chambers to regulate their procedure, but such regulations, I presume, must be undertaken in recognition of national realities and exigencies.
As much as the eyes can see right now, debating an electoral act amendment bill in February 2027 is already tottering towards what the doctors call BID-Brought in Dead, or what the English people would call Dead on Arrival (DoA). Any discerning mind would want to ask what the lawmakers have been doing since January 2024, when the legal tangoes over the governorship elections were concluded. Recall that the Supreme Court had earlier given its verdict on the presidential election on October 26, 2023. The rulings of the apex court had defined the 2022 Electoral Act, and no one was left in doubt as to the main contentions in the political space. So, you may want to ask the lawmakers what impeded them from structuring the needed amendments between February 2024 and December 2025. As things are right now, the process appears encumbered, and the bill is fast becoming a stillbirth. Check out the remainder of the processes-the House of Representatives would have to tidy the outstanding sections it wanted to consider on January 29, when its committee chairman was nowhere to be found; it also has to align the new sections with the ones it earlier passed on December 23, 2025; the Senate would have to make the clause-by-clause consideration to guarantee a Third Reading of the bill; and the two chambers would have to set up a Conference Committee to harmonise the bills into a single document. After those processes are completed, the National Assembly’s Legal Department would have to go through the harmonized bill to ensure there are no legal encumbrances that the courts can latch on to declare some sections either invalid or in conflict/inconsistent with the 1999 Constitution. It is after that process is done that the Clerk to the National Assembly (CNA) will transmit the bill to the President, who has 30 days to either assent or decline his assent (veto). Once the bill leaves the National Assembly, it would have to secure the nod of the Attorney General and Minister of Justice, whose office would advise the president on the way forward. Can all these processes be completed between now and March 1? That is very much in doubt. It thus looks to me as if we are preparing a damsel for a beautifully packaged ceremony, whereas the potential groom had eloped with another damsel the night before. I don’t know the magic the National Assembly and the Presidency would perform to make the Electoral Act Amendment bill applicable for the 2027 election, and we may not need a soothsayer to cast his divinations before we conclude that the result of that exercise is tending towards what Fela Anikulapo Kuti called “sorrow, tears, and blood.”
Aside from the legislative booby traps already highlighted, the amendment bill itself comes with another baggage, especially the proposal that elections into executive positions be held six months before the end of the tenure. To accomplish that, we would have to hold the presidential and gubernatorial elections in November 2026, but there is no way INEC can meet the 360-day window within which it is to announce the Notice of Elections. The lawmakers may seek to compel INEC to run a crash programme by compressing the 360 days to a manageable number and then forcing the electoral body to jettison aspects of its calendar.
But the proposed bill addresses clear ills in the electoral system that should gladden the hearts of voters. The contention during the last presidential election was that an electronic glitch experienced by INEC affected the collation of the election results, and that made the major candidates drag the matter up to the Supreme Court. For the first time in the Republic, we had three candidates claiming to have won the election in 2023. The amendment bill is seeking to erase such rancour by seeking to legalise the electronic transmission of election results from the polling units. It is also seeking to simplify the identification process during elections. Many people with valid Permanent Voters Card (PVCs) were unable to vote in previous elections due to the failure of the machines to read their fingerprints. The amendment bill is thus seeking multiple identification procedures to include the use of NIN and an international passport. The bill is also seeking to increase campaign spending by raising the limits of a presidential candidate’s spending from N5bn to N10 billion, while governorship candidates can now spend up to N3billion from N1billion permitted by the 2022 Act. Though there is nothing scientific about the proposal on election spending, the fact that the lawmakers are seeking to increase the figures could take it closer to reality.
But can we just blame Akpabio and his colleagues for the laxity we are seeing here? It would be unfair to do so. There appears to be an obvious flaw in the system that allows us to always get electoral act amendments delayed till the last minute. There was a beautiful Electoral Act amendment bill transmitted to the late President Muhammadu Buhari in 2019, but he declined assent because it was too close to the elections. I hope we are not repeating a trip on that inglorious path. The Electoral Act is the major document that guides elections. It should hold a dear place in the hearts of anyone concerned about leadership recruitment in the country. But where the political parties consistently act unconcerned, they leave the room for legislators to major in minors and minor in majors, as a friend would have it. Whatever we get, we will simply be reaping the benefits of indulgence by the political parties and civil society.
(Published by the Sunday Tribune, February 1, 2026)
