Bola Tinubu’s Presidential election victory places BVAS and expertise within the highlight once more

On Wednesday morning, Nigeria’s electoral physique introduced Bola Tinubu because the winner of the 2023 Presidential election. In a good three-way race, many anticipated that expertise would guarantee transparency. However the election ends on a observe that can result in litigation. In the end, Nigeria’s 2023 elections present that expertise wants to fulfill political will to make a distinction. With its credibility below query, the electoral umpire–and expertise–have been the present’s stars for the flawed causes. 

The Biometric Voter accreditation system (BVAS) and the INEC End result Election Viewer (IReV) are two technological elements of Nigeria’s elections. BVAS validates voters utilizing fingerprint/facial expertise 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 inconceivable 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 might be spotty) gave hope that it will be a game-changer. 

BVAS and its contentious document in lead as much as Presidential election

Within the Anambra governorship elections held in 2021, Charles Soludo, the eventual winner, referred to as BVAS a complete failure. He stated, “The elemental factor is that the expertise collapsed…voting is but to begin in lots of polling models.” In Delta’s bye-election in 2021, there have been related points with BVAS. It was the beginning of a sample suggesting that it was not an enormous enchancment on smartcard readers, as INEC claimed.

Comparable eventualities 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 other voters in Bogoro Local government struggled too. On Saturday, BVAS contributed to late voting nationwide, with many citizens nonetheless making an attempt to vote hours after the elections ended. But the most important difficulty with BVAS nonetheless got here right down to web connectivity. 

BVAS, IReV and a system unprepared for scale 

Final week, a TechCabal article requested if Nigeria’s web protection may deal with Nigeria’s election. It was a vital 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 add photos of the polling unit end result type (Type EC8A), from polling models to the INEC End result Viewing Portal (IReV) in real-time and to the INEC central server for collation. If the polling facilities don’t have adequate web connectivity, there can be inconsistencies within the numbers.”

Importing election outcomes for public viewing prevents manipulation of outcomes throughout collation and the stress typically placed on INEC officers to tamper with precise outcomes. Regardless of this, solely 45% of Nigeria’s election outcomes have been accessible on IReV three days after the elections closed. It introduced the credibility of INEC into query and diminished public confidence within the outcomes. 

INEC blamed these delays on technical hitches. The fee stated, “The issue is completely resulting from technical hitches associated to scaling up the IReV from a platform for managing low season, State elections, to 1 for managing nationwide common elections.” 

BVAS and the human component 

Whereas BVAS solves voting-related issues, we’ve seen in actual time that it throws up its personal issues. It’s additionally doable to argue that BVAS has simplified election rigging by creating one focus for dangerous actors to disrupt. And regardless of the failures of the expertise, it nonetheless wants human parts to benefit from these failures.

With solely 45% of election results publicly accessible on INEC’s outcomes viewer hours earlier than a winner was introduced, it’ll take one other couple of days for a lot of voters to find out if the appropriate outcomes have been transmitted. Whereas INEC insists that solely duly signed outcomes can be uploaded, many atypical Nigerians have witnessed election rigging one too many instances to take their phrase for it. In any case, it’s why we put all our religion in expertise this time.