The Senate fixed the Electoral Act. Except for the part that makes rigging possible.

The Senate said it listened. After #OccupyNASS protests shut down the National Assembly entrance, after Peter Obi joined protesters at the gate, after the NLC threatened boycotts, senators reversed themselves and passed a version of the Electoral Act that mandates electronic transmission of results from polling units to INEC's IReV portal.

Sounds like a win. Read the clause.

Where network connectivity fails, the manually completed Form EC8A, signed by the presiding officer, becomes the primary basis for collation and declaration of results.

Form EC8A is the same document that disappeared, reappeared, and was contested at election tribunals throughout 2023. Network in Nigeria fails on reliable schedules. INEC's portal was ruled a viewing tool, not a legal collation site, by the Supreme Court after the last election. The Senate knows all of this. The manual fallback isn't an oversight.

The Senate's defence, delivered yesterday by Senate Leader Opeyemi Bamidele, is that 85 million Nigerians still lack grid electricity and broadband penetration is weak. He's right about both facts. He's describing an infrastructure crisis this government inherited and has not solved. And he's using that crisis, their crisis, as the legal justification for keeping result manipulation possible.

The Conference Committee is reconciling this with the House version now. The FCT Area Council elections are in five days. Whoever controls that clause controls more than Abuja.