Electoral Act Committee Moves Session To Night Amid Lawmakers’ No-Show

The scheduled meeting of the Conference Committee of the Senate and House of Representatives on the Electoral Act (Repeal and Re-enactment) Bill, 2026, was unexpectedly postponed to late evening after key members of the House failed to attend the planned session. According to Ireporter Online, the meeting, originally slated for 11 a.m., could not commence due to the absence of several House representatives.

The development comes amid increasing pressure on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to ensure that the electronic transmission of results ahead of the February 20, 2027, general elections is efficient, transparent, and legally robust, avoiding controversies similar to those witnessed during the 2023 presidential poll.

Sources revealed that while some senators arrived on time and waited for the House members, none appeared. The chairmen of the Senate and House Electoral Committees, Simon Lalong and Adebayo Balogun, were present. After waiting, the senators temporarily relocated to Lalong’s office before agreeing to reconvene at 3 p.m. Later, only a few senators returned, and although Lalong and Balogun held a brief closed-door discussion, no consensus was reached, effectively ending the day without a harmonised position on the bill.

A night meeting was subsequently convened at the Senate President’s Lodge in Maitama in a last-minute attempt to reconcile differences before today’s plenary session. The harmonisation panel is tasked with aligning positions on roughly 20 clauses, including the explanatory memorandum and the bill’s long title.

Clause 60(3), concerning the electronic transmission of election results, remains the most contentious. While the Senate’s version allows manual collation through Form EC8A if communication fails and removes the term “real-time,” the House insists on mandatory real-time transmission to INEC’s Result Viewing Portal.