{"id":82553,"date":"2026-02-09T06:23:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-09T06:23:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=82553"},"modified":"2026-02-09T06:23:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T06:23:00","slug":"nlc-threatens-protests-boycott-over-electoral-act-amendment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2026\/02\/09\/nlc-threatens-protests-boycott-over-electoral-act-amendment\/","title":{"rendered":"NLC Threatens Protests, Boycott Over Electoral Act Amendment"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Onyeanya Ebere Immaculata<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), has threatened nationwide protests and a possible boycott of elections over what it described as contradictory positions by the Senate on amendments to the Electoral Act, particularly the provision on electronic transmission of election results.<\/p>\n<p>The union accused the Senate of undermining public confidence in the electoral process by failing to clearly state whether electronic transmission of results would be mandatory under the amended law.<\/p>\n<p>In a statement on Sunday, NLC President, Joe Ajaero, said the ambiguity threatens electoral integrity and public trust. \u201cNigerians deserve a transparent system where votes are not only counted but seen to be counted,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>The NLC said available records show that the Senate voted down Clause 60(3) of the Electoral Act 2022 (Repeal and Re-enactment), Amendment Bill 2026, which sought to make real-time electronic transmission of results from polling units to INEC\u2019s Result Viewing portal mandatory.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, lawmakers retained the existing provision that allows transmission at the discretion of presiding officers after votes are counted and announced at polling units. The decision has drawn criticism from civil society groups and opposition figures.<\/p>\n<p>The Congress called on the National Assembly to ensure that the harmonisation process produces a final bill with clear provisions on transmission and collation of results, warning that continued ambiguity would weaken public trust in elections.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cFailure to add electronic transmission in real time will lead to mass action before, during and after the election, or total boycott of the election,\u201d the statement said.<\/p>\n<p>The warning comes amid reports that the Senate has fixed Tuesday, February 10, 2026, for an emergency plenary that may revisit the rejected amendment.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Onyeanya Ebere Immaculata The Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), has threatened nationwide protests and a possible boycott of elections over what it described as contradictory positions by the Senate on amendments to the Electoral Act, particularly the provision on electronic transmission of election results. The union accused the Senate of undermining public confidence in the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":82554,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82553","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82553","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82553"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82553\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82555,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82553\/revisions\/82555"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82554"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82553"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82553"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82553"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}