The law now says electronic transmission is mandatory. The same law also says manual results override it when networks fail. Both can't be true. One of them is a lie waiting to happen in 2027.

Tuesday's Senate session was billed as a reversal. After public outrage over last week's decision to strip electronic transmission of results from the Electoral Act, legislators gathered for an emergency plenary to "fix" things. They approved electronic transmission to INEC's Results Viewing Portal. They called it progress. They were describing a loophole.

Here's how the new Section 60(3) works. Presiding officers must electronically transmit polling unit results after votes are counted and Form EC8A is signed. Electronic transmission is mandatory: the law uses the word "shall." But the law also includes a proviso: where transmission fails due to network issues, the signed EC8A form becomes the primary basis for collation and declaration. Manual overrides electronic. Always.

This isn't a backup system. It's an escape hatch. Because "network failure" has no definition. No threshold. No verification requirement. A presiding officer in any polling unit can claim transmission failed, and the manual result (altered or authentic, there's no way to tell) becomes official. The system INEC spent years building to prevent result manipulation can now be bypassed with four words: "the network didn't work."

Senator Seriake Dickson, who missed last week's vote due to bereavement, returned Tuesday to defend the compromise. He told ARISE News that "real-time" transmission is a misunderstood term. Nigeria doesn't vote electronically, so results can't appear instantly anyway. He argued the EC8A form has always been the primary evidence of election results, and the Supreme Court confirmed this in 2023. He's technically correct. He's also missing the point.

The 2023 elections proved why INEC's Result Viewing Portal mattered. When results appeared on IReV within minutes of counting, it became exponentially harder to inflate figures at collation centers. Party agents could cross-check uploaded results against the forms they signed at polling units. The portal didn't eliminate rigging (nothing does) but it reduced the time window for manipulation from hours to minutes. That window just reopened.

Dickson says compromise was necessary because "parliament works on the basis of majority." He doesn't agree with the proviso allowing manual override, but majority carried it. Fair enough. What he doesn't explain is why the majority (the same senators who claim to support electoral integrity) insisted on that specific proviso. Not as a secondary option. As the primary escape route.

Civil society groups and opposition figures warn the amendment creates room for manipulation, especially in areas with poor network coverage. They're being polite. "Room for manipulation" undersells it. This isn't a crack in the system. It's a revolving door. Any returning officer can walk through it, manual results in hand, and declare victory for whoever controls the collation center that day.

The Senate will now harmonize its version with the House of Representatives, which passed electronic transmission without the manual override clause. Dickson says if he were on the conference committee, he'd adopt the House version. It reflects what both chambers originally agreed in joint committee. Whether he gets that chance depends on who Senate President Godswill Akpabio appoints.

But even if the House version prevails, the fight isn't over. The amendment still requires presidential assent. And President Tinubu's party has historically resisted electronic transmission. Dickson admitted as much. The party in power, he said, "has always been very resistant to these notions." Past tense. As if that resistance evaporated overnight.

It didn't. Tuesday's session proves it's alive and well, just better disguised. The Senate approved electronic transmission. They also approved the mechanism to ignore it. Call it progress if you want. The 2027 results will call it something else.