Prominent African Democratic Congress (ADC) chieftain and actor-turned-politician Kenneth Okonkwo has called on the Senate to completely remove provisions allowing manual transmission of election results from the Electoral Act Amendment Bill, warning that such clauses risk undermining the credibility of future polls.

Speaking on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Tuesday, Okonkwo insisted that electronic transmission of results directly from polling units must be made mandatory to prevent manipulation and enhance transparency.

“Once they put that law that you must transmit from the polling unit, I am okay,” he said. “Any polling officer would not leave the polling unit.”

He urged lawmakers to go further by stipulating tough consequences for failure. “The House of Representatives should go further to say that where it is not possible to transmit from the polling unit, that election should be cancelled,” Okonkwo added.

Addressing concerns that cancelling elections over transmission failures would be too harsh, he maintained that the entire electoral process — from accreditation to voting — is meaningless without result integrity.

“The reason you are doing accreditation [and] voting is for the result. If you do all these things to get a fraudulent result, what have you gained?” he asked.

Okonkwo described rigged elections as Nigeria’s most fundamental problem, arguing that credible polls are the key to unlocking the country’s potential.

“On the day we have free and fair elections in Nigeria, 20 years after that, we would become a superpower nation,” he said. He pointed to stable democracies like the United States, where the sovereignty of the people underpins political stability, and called on Nigerians across party lines to defend democratic values, stressing that “democracy does not belong to any political party.”

His comments come as the National Assembly faces sustained public criticism over the Electoral Act Amendment Bill. Last week, the Senate passed the bill, rejecting proposals for mandatory real-time electronic transmission of results while retaining the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) discretion over the mode of transmission.

Following backlash and protests by opposition figures and civil society groups, the Senate on Tuesday revised its position. It approved electronic transmission of results (without the “real-time” specification) but allowed manual collation as a fallback where internet connectivity fails.

A harmonisation committee has since been constituted to reconcile the Senate and House versions of the bill.