The House of Representatives has approved stricter punishments for electoral offences, adopting heavier fines and longer jail terms as part of amendments to the Electoral Act, 2022.
During plenary on Thursday, lawmakers endorsed a penalty of 10 years’ imprisonment or a N75 million fine for offences such as the forgery of nomination documents and the destruction of election result sheets.
The new fine represents a significant increase from the N50 million penalty stipulated in the Principal Act. The House also approved a N5 million fine for the improper use of a voter’s card.
However, legislators declined to support a proposal seeking to impose a two-year jail term on individuals found guilty of financially or materially inducing delegates to sway the outcome of party primaries, congresses or conventions.
Members expressed concerns that such a provision could be exploited by political rivals to intimidate or harass aspirants and candidates.
The House also altered existing provisions on over-voting. Lawmakers removed the clause that required automatic cancellation of results and the conduct of fresh elections in polling units where over-voting occurs.
In its place, the House approved a new arrangement under which excess votes would be deducted proportionately from the total votes recorded for all candidates. Under the revised framework, the Presiding Officer in the affected polling unit would face prosecution.
Providing insight into the rationale behind the amendments, the Chairman of the House Committee on Electoral Matters, Adebayo Balogun, explained that the Electoral Bill 2025 was initially drafted to replace the Electoral Act 2022 in its entirety.
According to him, the bill was designed to consolidate improvements recorded in recent elections while addressing emerging challenges in Nigeria’s electoral system.
“The committee, guided by stakeholder engagements, public hearings and expert submissions, initially proposed far-reaching reforms aimed at modernising the electoral framework,” Balogun said.
“These included early voting, inmate voting, the replacement of the Permanent Voters’ Card with more technology-driven accreditation mechanisms, adjustments to electoral timelines, and other innovations that would have significantly altered the structure and philosophy of the Electoral Act 2022,” he added.
Balogun noted that procedural considerations ultimately shaped the House’s decision to pursue amendments rather than a complete repeal of the existing law.
“In legislative practice, repeal and reenactment is appropriate where proposed changes fundamentally transform the identity of an existing law,” he said.
“In this case, since several of those transformative provisions were not approved at committee stage, the House, sitting as a Committee of the Whole, resolved that amendment rather than outright repeal was the more appropriate path,” he said.
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