BREAKING: Senate Dumps Electronic Voting Method, Adopts Manual Roll-Call Of Senators To Decide State Police, Others

The Senate, on Wednesday, abandoned its planned electronic voting method for the consideration of the State Police Bill and other constitution amendment proposals, opting instead for a manual roll-call voting process in which Senators will publicly declare their positions.

The decision was announced during plenary on Wednesday following a motion by Senate Leader, Senator Opeyemi Bamidele, who cited technical challenges affecting some electronic voting devices in the Senate chamber and warned that reliance on the system could disenfranchise members.

Bamidele urged the chamber to adopt an open voting process to ensure that every Senator participates in the historic constitution amendment exercise.

“Rather than go by way of electronic voting, which obviously now will disenfranchise a few or some of our colleagues whose machines are not working, I am moving that we give every distinguished Senator the opportunity to answer his or her father’s name by doing manual voting,” he said.

Senate President Godswill Akpabio endorsed the proposal, emphasising that public voting would enhance transparency and allow constituents to know where their representatives stand on critical constitutional issues.

“For the purpose of transparency, and the need for the constituents to know where you stand on every issue, it is good for us to go into manual voting,” Akpabio said.

Under the adopted procedure, Senators will be called individually to stand and declare their votes during the clause-by-clause consideration of the constitution amendment bills.

To facilitate the new arrangement, the Senate suspended relevant provisions of its Standing Rules through a voice vote, paving the way for the manual roll-call process.

The development came shortly after the Senate conducted test-runs of its electronic voting system, which was expected to be deployed for taking decisions on the constitution amendments for the first time in the 10th Senate.

Proceedings remained ongoing on Wednesday, with Bamidele leading the debate on the State Police Bill, an executive-backed proposal sponsored in his name on behalf of President Bola Tinubu’s administration.

The State Police Bill is widely regarded as the centerpiece of the ongoing constitution amendment exercise and one of the most significant security reform proposals before the National Assembly.

If approved, the legislation would fundamentally alter Nigeria’s policing architecture by allowing states to establish and operate their own police services alongside the existing Nigeria Police Force (NPF).

The Senate is also expected to vote on several other far-reaching constitution amendment proposals as deliberations continued in the Red Chamber as the the time of this report.

The outcome of the exercise is being closely watched by Nigerians and other stakeholders across the country, with many observers describing it as a defining moment in Nigeria’s constitutional and democratic evolution.