We Never Scrapped INEC IReV Portal for 2027 Elections

Senate Denies Scrapping INEC IReV Portal for 2027 Elections
Lawmaker says IReV only publishes manually declared results.
Voting and ballot counting remain fully manual nationwide.

The Senate has dismissed claims that lawmakers scrapped the Independent National Electoral Commission Result Viewing portal for the 2027 general election.

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EKO HOT BLOG reports that Chairman of the Senate ad hoc panel on the review of the 2026 Electoral Bill, Adeniyi Adegbonmire, clarified the position on Thursday during an interview on ARISE Television.

He said the Senate never resolved to discontinue the use of the IReV portal, stressing that it remains a platform for publishing results already declared at polling units.

“The Senate never said INEC should not use IReV for the 2027 elections.

“What people must understand is that IReV is not an e-voting platform. It is software developed by INEC to publicise results that have been manually counted and declared at polling units.

“People need to understand what real-time means. Real-time transmission can only happen if INEC adopts an e-voting system. For now, INEC does not have the capability for e-voting.”

Adegbonmire explained that voting and counting of ballots are still conducted manually across the country. He noted that only the final results recorded on Form EC8A are uploaded to the IReV portal.

He cautioned against misinterpretation of legislative proceedings and urged the media to report electoral reform discussions accurately.

“You must first manually write out the figure. After you have written out the figure at the polling unit, then you can upload, transfer or transmit, depending on the nomenclature we want to use,” Adegbonmire said.

“When you talk about transmission, it has nothing to do with the sanctity of the voting process. It is not IReV or BVAS that count ballots. Vote count is manually done.