The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has announced that it will not upload any election results to its Result Viewing Portal (IReV) if they show discrepancies with data captured by the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS).
Dr. Lawrence Bayode, the Director of ICT at INEC, made this assurance in Abuja during the launch of the AI4Election Hackathon initiative by RiseNetworks. He stated that the commission’s technical framework is designed to ensure that any result failing to tally with the figures recorded on the BVAS devices will be identified and withheld from the public portal.
This technical safeguard aims to address long-standing concerns regarding the integrity of electronic transmission in Nigerian elections. By synchronising the data between the BVAS and the IReV, the commission intends to prevent the uploading of unauthorised or manipulated figures that do not reflect the actual votes cast and recorded at the polling units.
Strengthening electoral transparency through technology
The BVAS device serves a dual purpose in the Nigerian electoral process: it is used for the biometric accreditation of voters and for the electronic transmission of polling unit results. The IReV portal, on the other hand, is the public-facing interface where scanned copies of the official result sheets, known as EC8A forms, are made available for scrutiny by political parties, observers, and the general public.
Discrepancies between the physical results announced at polling units and the digital data appearing on the IReV have been a recurring source of litigation and public distrust in previous election cycles. By implementing a rule where results must strictly align with BVAS data before being uploaded, INEC is attempting to close the loophole that allows for manual interference during the transmission phase.
The announcement was made within the context of the AI4Election Hackathon, an initiative designed to explore how artificial intelligence and advanced technology can improve the transparency and efficiency of the electoral process in Nigeria. The programme encourages developers and technologists to create tools that can support election observers and regulatory bodies in monitoring real-time data accuracy.
While the commission has previously faced criticism over delays in uploading results to the IReV, the current focus has shifted towards the quality and accuracy of the data being transmitted. The integration of strict verification protocols between the BVAS and IReV is expected to be a central component of the commission’s technical strategy for upcoming electoral exercises.
The effectiveness of this automated verification will depend on the seamless connectivity of BVAS devices and the resilience of the INEC servers during peak transmission periods. The commission is expected to provide further technical details on how these discrepancies will be flagged and resolved during the next major election cycle.
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