Yiaga Africa has advised the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to conduct a nationwide mock exercise of its IREV result transmission system ahead of the 2027 general elections to prevent a repeat of the technical challenges experienced during the 2023 presidential poll.
Executive Director of Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo, gave the advice during an interview on Symfoni TV, warning that INEC must test not only its voter accreditation technology but also the capacity of its result transmission infrastructure ahead of the election.
According to Itodo, the 2027 general election will be the first nationwide poll since 2023 in which IREV will be required to process and manage results on such a large scale.
He said INEC’s planned mock accreditation exercise should include a mock transmission of election results to determine whether the system can withstand the volume of data expected during the general election.
“It is not enough to conduct a mock accreditation exercise. We must test the IREV to ensure that the kind of glitches experienced in 2023 do not repeat themselves in 2027,” Itodo said.
He also called on INEC to subject the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, and the backend infrastructure supporting both BVAS and IREV to independent audit and scrutiny.
According to him, an independent assessment of the commission’s server capacity, software optimisation, data protection and access logs would help build public confidence in the electoral process.
Itodo said political parties, civil society organisations and the media should also be given opportunities to independently scrutinise aspects of the electoral technology.
He further criticised provisions in the Electoral Act which place primacy on physical result sheets during the collation process, warning that electronically transmitted results could become secondary even where discrepancies arise.
The Yiaga Africa boss argued that the purpose of electronically transmitting polling unit results was to provide a verification mechanism capable of detecting possible manipulation between the polling unit and collation centres.
He said where discrepancies exist between electronically transmitted results and physical copies, the integrity of the original result transmitted directly from the polling unit must be protected.
Itodo maintained that technology would be one of the major factors that could determine the credibility of the 2027 elections, alongside political interference and the ability of INEC’s systems to withstand cyber threats and pressure from political actors.
He stressed that the key question ahead of 2027 was not whether INEC had an election plan, but whether its systems and personnel could resist political interference and protect the integrity of the votes cast by Nigerians.
“The question for 2027 is whether the systems that INEC puts in place have the capacity to withstand political pressure, cyber attacks and political interference,” he said.
