Tinubu’s Assent To Electoral Act Not Surprising, Predictable — Senator Umeh
The senator representing Anambra Central, Victor Umeh, has described President Bola Tinubu’s decision to sign the Electoral Act (Amendment) Bill 2026 into law as expected, saying the legislative process clearly pointed to that outcome.
Umeh, who spoke on Channels Television’s Sunrise Daily programme on Thursday, said the political and legislative dynamics surrounding the bill made the President’s assent inevitable.
“There is no surprise that it will be so. Anybody who was expecting the president not to assent to the bill is perhaps not honest to himself or herself. The whole process was predicted to end this way, and that’s what we have seen.
“Seeing what played out in both chambers of the National Assembly, one will be expecting that at the end, the president will veto the National Assembly or say that he doesn’t want to assent to the bill…because everything was tailored to meet a certain end,” he said.
Umeh traced the controversy to the debate over electronic transmission of election results, particularly the provision now captured in Section 63 of the amended law.
He explained that the repealed Electoral Act 2022, then Section 65, only provided for the transfer of results in a manner prescribed by the electoral commission, without expressly mandating electronic transmission.
According to him, the commission’s guidelines for the 2023 general election required electronic transmission, but the law itself did not explicitly state it.
He said disputes arising from the 2023 process, especially claims of glitches affecting the presidential poll, triggered litigation that eventually reached the Supreme Court of Nigeria.
Umeh noted that the court held that electronic transmission “was not expressly recognised by the Act,” even though the Independent National Electoral Commission had the power to prescribe the mode of result transfer.
He said the amendment was therefore aimed at giving clear statutory backing to electronic transmission to avoid similar disputes.
