News

Nigerian Senate Adopts Electronic Voting System

Published

8 years ago

October 18, 2016

The voting system of the current Nigerian Senate of the 8th Assembly has gone technological to replace the crude voice system which is incoherent and subject to manipulation.

For the first time since the inception of the eighth national assembly, the upper chamber decided its position on a matter on Tuesday by electronic voting.

Tuesday also marked the first time since the final year of seventh assembly that electronic voting was used at the plenary

The plenary session had started with the use voice voting to adopt the votes and proceedings of the previous legislative day, but it later switched to electronic voting, which was used in the confirmation of supreme court justices.

Mohammed Ndume, senate leader, said the All Progressives Congress (APC) government had brought change by using the card reader in 2015 general election, and it had now extended it to the senate via electronic voting.

Following the announcement by the senate leader, Ike Ekweremadu who is the deputy senate president, told his colleagues that they could only vote from their assigned seats by slotting in their cards in a provision made for it.

It appeared that most of the senators did not understand the procedure, as Ekweremadu repeatedly explained to his colleagues that they first had to slot in their cards to register before they could vote.

While voting on the confirmation of Justice Ejembi Eko, 39 senators registered but 38 voted yes to the confirmation.

For the confirmation of Justice Amina Augie, 40 senators registered but only 39 senators voted yes to the confirmation.