Solomon Ogidan, a volunteer agent for a major political party in Nigeria’s February 25 elections and a 29-year-old computer scientist, flayed his hands in the air in frustration at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) official’s repeated failures to enter the password to transmit results from his polling place.
He had covered 20 polling places for his party, and in eight of them, the same issue cropped up. The INEC representatives were unable to operate the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) device in the polling places where the password wasn’t a problem.
Two BVAS machines that were supposed to be operated by the two officials present were present in one of the polling places. However, one of them claimed she was unable to use the device. The other officials claimed that the password that was given to them was incorrect. Why would INEC purposefully give the incorrect password to some of its officials in Lagos? said Ogidan.
The eagerly anticipated general elections took place on Saturday, but not without the typical dramas that Nigerian elections are known for. This election was supposed to be different for a lot of people. The electoral umpire was expected to have taken the difficulties from the previous elections into account and made sufficient preparations to ensure that those issues would not arise again.
This was a major factor in the President Muhammadu Buhari-led administration’s decision to approve N305 billion for INEC for the 2023 elections. The electoral body’s budget is the largest. In comparison to the N18.8 billion spent on the same presidential and National Assembly elections in 2015, INEC received N234 billion in 2019, a record.
The budget for the 2023 elections also meant that, when compared to the four previous elections, INEC’s budget for each voter was the highest at N3,263. Voter registration per person was N1,671 in 2011, N1,569 in 2015, and N2841 in 2019. The South African Independent Electoral Commission will receive nearly 15 times as much money for the 2024 election as does the Nigerian government with its N305 billion.
The nation has approved $20,01,000,000 for the upcoming election.
The election on Saturday was only about 35% tech-driven and more manual, according to an information systems and cloud computing expert who prefers to remain anonymous. Four years would have been sufficient for INEC to build and strengthen the application and software it would need to conduct seamless elections in 2023.
Software and knowledge engineer Emeka Okoye stated, “From what I could see and from their press release, the web applications were not ‘load’ and’stress’ tested. “Not doing that alone before a significant event like an election demonstrated incapacity, illiteracy, and recklessness. They had no justifications because they were aware of the number of uploads based on BVAS, the time at which it will be made based on the voting period, and the nature of the data that will be sent.
The rest of the process was largely manual, with the exception of registering voters, printing Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) for 93.5 million eligible voters, and photographing each voter prior to casting a ballot. because The majority of the results had to be transported by an INEC official to the collating centers, where they were calculated by senior INEC officials, because BVAS was unable to connect, either because the official claimed there was no internet, the network was down, or there was a requirement for approval.
Former World Bank treasurer Aruma Oteh asked, “How can leaders with empathy permit their citizens to suffer so much—from the onerous process of obtaining a PVC just to be recognized as eligible to vote, to spending a day waiting for accreditation and voting.
According to experts, the failure INEC reported was not caused by a malfunction of the machinery but rather by preventable human errors, inadequate training of officials, and intentional sabotage. It’s also important to remember that Mahmud Yakubu, the INEC chairman, had expressed opposition to the idea of only transmitting results electronically.
He raised eyebrows in early 2022 when he acknowledged that the commission would transmit election results electronically and manually tally the same. The law does not mandate that collation be done using results that have been uploaded, but rather using results that have been manually transferred to the collation centers. The uploaded result, however, takes precedence when there is a contest, according to an interview with Yakubu.
The BVAS was supposed to provide a list of accredited voters because it holds the list of all voters who passed accreditation, according to an expert who wished to remain anonymous in order to speak freely. Additionally, it was intended to provide a record of the outcomes, or a visual representation of the signed test results sheets. The results of the various elections are then uploaded by the BVAS.
“This is the source of the issue. You must now adjust the results on a polling-unit-by-polling-unit basis so that they match the total number of registered voters. What they did was stop results from being uploaded, which is still possible on BVAS machines. They accomplished this by either refusing to open the portal or by withholding login information from the users. Remember that once something is uploaded, it is visible to everyone, and that details about where, when, and who uploaded it are recorded.
The BVAS reportedly shut down for nearly seven hours, preventing polling units from electronically transmitting the results, according to a number of sources. A Vanguard report from 2022 indicated that the outcomes might be passed through middlemen known as Registration Area Technicians, or RATECHs, who work at the ward levels. Before uploading election results (Form EC8A) from the voting unit within the ward to the INEC Results Viewing Portal, the RATECHs’ task is to review them (IReV). Why the BVAS can’t transmit simultaneously to the INEC server and the IReV has been a mystery to some experts.
The IReV is still well-secured, according to INEC, which claimed on Sunday that the difficulties it was having were not the result of an attack on or sabotage of its systems. Users of the IReV would have noticed improvements since Saturday night, it added, adding that its technical team was working diligently to resolve all outstanding issues. Who told the commission’s officials at the polling places not to upload results remains a mystery.
According to INEC, which asserted on Sunday that the issues it was experiencing weren’t the result of an attack or sabotage of its systems, the IReV is still securely guarded. It added that users of the IReV would have noticed improvements since Saturday night and that its technical team was diligently working to address all unresolved issues. Who instructed the commission’s representatives at the polling locations not to upload results is still unknown.
