On Wednesday morning, Nigeria’s electoral physique introduced Bola Tinubu as the winner of the 2023 Presidential election. In a good three-way race, many anticipated that technology would guarantee transparency. But the election ends on a observe that can result in litigation. Ultimately, Nigeria’s 2023 elections present that technology wants to satisfy political will to make a distinction. With its credibility underneath query, the electoral umpire–and technology–had been the present’s stars for the fallacious causes.
The Biometric Voter accreditation system (BVAS) and the INEC Result Election Viewer (IReV) are two technological parts of Nigeria’s elections. BVAS validates voters utilizing fingerprint/facial technology and the six digits of your identification quantity. When it was launched in April 2021, there was hope that BVAS would make rigging close to not possible by stopping overvoting. INEC’s assurance that the BVAS machine didn’t want web entry to validate voters (essential in a rustic the place web protection may be spotty) gave hope that it might be a game-changer.
BVAS and its contentious file in lead as much as Presidential election
In the Anambra governorship elections held in 2021, Charles Soludo, the eventual winner, referred to as BVAS a whole failure. He mentioned, “The fundamental thing is that the technology collapsed…voting is yet to start in many polling units.” In Delta’s bye-election in 2021, there have been comparable points with BVAS. It was the begin of a sample suggesting that it was not an enormous enchancment on smartcard readers, as INEC claimed.
Similar situations performed out on the day of Nigeria’s Presidential elections, with BVAS failing to accredit Rivers state governor Nyesom Wike. Former governor Olusegun Osoba, and a number of voters in Bogoro Local authorities struggled too. On Saturday, BVAS contributed to late voting nationwide, with many citizens nonetheless attempting to vote hours after the elections ended. Yet the largest concern with BVAS nonetheless got here all the way down to web connectivity.
BVAS, IReV and a system unprepared for scale
Last week, a TechCabal article requested if Nigeria’s web protection might deal with Nigeria’s election. It was an important query as a result of BVAS wants the web to transmit outcomes to INEC’s server. Per the identical article, “[BVAS needs internet access] to upload images of the polling unit result form (Form EC8A), from polling units to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) in real-time and to the INEC central server for collation. If the polling centers do not have sufficient internet connectivity, there will be inconsistencies in the numbers.”
Uploading election outcomes for public viewing prevents manipulation of outcomes throughout collation and the stress usually placed on INEC officers to tamper with precise outcomes. Despite this, solely 45% of Nigeria’s election outcomes had been accessible on IReV three days after the elections closed. It introduced the credibility of INEC into query and decreased public confidence in the outcomes.
INEC blamed these delays on technical hitches. The fee mentioned, “The problem is totally due to technical hitches related to scaling up the IReV from a platform for managing off-season, State elections, to one for managing nationwide general elections.”
BVAS and the human component
While BVAS solves voting-related issues, we’ve seen in actual time that it throws up its personal issues. It’s additionally potential to argue that BVAS has simplified election rigging by creating one focus for dangerous actors to disrupt. And regardless of the failures of the technology, it nonetheless wants human components to reap the benefits of these failures.
With solely 45% of election outcomes publicly accessible on INEC’s outcomes viewer hours earlier than a winner was introduced, it’s going to take one other couple of days for a lot of voters to find out if the proper outcomes had been transmitted. While INEC insists that solely duly signed outcomes can be uploaded, many bizarre Nigerians have witnessed election rigging one too many instances to take their phrase for it. After all, it’s why we put all our religion in technology this time.
…. to be continued
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