By PETER ANOSIKE

A chieftain of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Nelson Ahamefula Akuma, has accused senators of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) of deliberately introducing lacunae into the Electoral Act to enable them manipulate the process.

Speaking at a press conference in Lagos, Akuma said that the reason why the ruling party senators are afraid of mandatory transmission of election results is because if that becomes the order, most of them would not return to the Senate.

According to him, that is why they are doing everything to make sure that there would be room for manipulation.

According to Akuma, Senate President Godswill Akpabio citing infrastructure and security challenges as reasons mandatory electronic transmission may not be feasible across the country is not tenable.

The ADC chieftain said that Akpabio’s statement of lack of infrastructure showed the reason why the ruling party is not investing in the development of critical infrastructure, such as electricity.

Akuma said that the current administration has not added a single megawatt since it came into office, even when the President told Nigerians not to vote for him again if he did not achieve steady power supply.

His words: “The purpose of this press conference is to remind the APC senators that we are no more in the era of illiteracy, so they should stop deceiving Nigerians. We understand very well the responsibility of the Senate which is strictly law making. It is INEC that is constitutionally empowered to conduct elections and the electoral body has not come out to tell Nigerians that they cannot do automatic electronic transmission of results. So, senators telling us that there are nine states in the country that has no network, without mentioning the states and that the national grid might collapse. That is certainly not their business. The only thing that Nigerians want from the National Assembly is to make mandatory transmission of election results constitutional, because if that is not done, it would continue to undermine transparency and credibility in our elections. Senate President’s defense of the National Assembly’s decision to remove mandatory electronic transmission of election results from the amended Electoral Act ahead of the 2027 general elections is a pure danger to our democracy.”

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