2027: Group Demands Independent Audit of INEC Technologies
Wale Igbintade
The Digital Rights Lawyers Initiative (DRLI) has called for an independent audit of Nigeria’s electoral technologies ahead of the 2027 general elections, warning that inadequate oversight of systems deployed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) could undermine public confidence in the electoral process.
The organisation also demanded stronger safeguards for voters’ personal and biometric information, insisting that the increasing deployment of technology in elections must be matched by effective data governance, independent verification and accountability mechanisms.
The call was made during a panel session titled, ‘The Ballot and the Byte: BVAS, Data Access, and the Unfinished Business of Electoral Accountability in Nigeria’, organised by DRLI with the support of Luminate at the 4th Annual Privacy Conference (PrivCon 2026), held on September 1 at the Civic Centre, Victoria Island, Lagos.
The panel brought together experts in law, civil society, election observation and data protection to examine the relationship between electoral technology, voters’ privacy and the credibility of elections.
The session was moderated by DRLI Co-Founder, Solomon Okedara, while the panellists included Godson Ogheneochuko of Udo Udoma & Belo-Osagie; Timi Olagunju of The Timeless Practice; Praise Adetula of the Centre for Rural Advocacy and Inclusive Development; Lanre Komolafe of the Lagos State Ministry of Justice; and Safiya Bichi of Yiaga Africa.
The experts said scrutiny of electoral technology ahead of the 2027 elections should extend beyond the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) to cover the wider technological infrastructure supporting voter registration, accreditation, transmission of results and storage of electoral information.
Olagunju, who focused on the challenge of building public confidence in electoral technology, proposed a three-part assurance framework comprising technical and technological audits, process and protocol audits, and public assurance mechanisms.
He maintained that simply assuring Nigerians that electoral technology was functioning would not be sufficient to inspire confidence in the 2027 elections.
Rather, he said the systems and processes supporting the electoral process should be independently examined to demonstrate their reliability, security and accountability.
Ogheneochuko also called for stronger data governance within INEC, including comprehensive records of processing activities and effective audit trails showing how electoral data moved through its systems, who accessed it and how unauthorised disclosures could occur.
He further stressed the need for clear safeguards governing the transfer of voters’ information to political parties and other authorised recipients.
The concerns assume greater significance because Nigeria’s electoral databases contain highly sensitive personal and biometric information.
Komolafe argued that electoral transparency and privacy should not be regarded as conflicting objectives, noting that the protection of voters’ information was essential to the integrity of the electoral process.
She advocated secure technological mechanisms that would allow legitimate access to electoral information without unnecessarily exposing voters’ personal data.
The experts also called for closer collaboration between INEC and the Nigeria Data Protection Commission (NDPC) to ensure that voters’ personal and biometric information was adequately protected.
They urged the electoral commission to establish stronger safeguards against inappropriate or unauthorised third-party access to voters’ information.
Beyond data protection, the panel raised concerns about the ability of electoral technologies to function effectively in rural and underserved communities.
Adetula identified poor network connectivity, unreliable electricity supply, inadequate technical support and limited voter understanding as factors that could affect the effectiveness of BVAS during elections.
She urged INEC to test electoral technologies under the actual conditions in which they would be deployed, rather than relying predominantly on controlled environments that might not reflect the realities confronting voters and election officials in underserved communities.
According to her, technology that performs satisfactorily in favourable conditions could encounter significant challenges when deployed in areas with poor connectivity, unstable electricity and limited technical support.
The panel therefore recommended realistic testing of electoral technologies in underserved communities before the 2027 elections.
The experts also turned their attention to the secrecy of the ballot, warning that technological and procedural safeguards must protect voters from coercion and vote-buying.
Bichi, drawing from election-observation experience, raised concerns over practices capable of compromising ballot secrecy, including poorly positioned voting cubicles, surveillance by political-party agents and attempts by voters to photograph their marked ballots.
She called for stronger voter education and enforcement against practices aimed at obtaining proof of how individuals voted.
Such practices, she warned, could facilitate coercion and vote-buying by enabling individuals to demonstrate to political actors how they cast their ballots.
The panel consequently recommended stronger measures to preserve ballot secrecy throughout the voting process.
The experts further called for improved training for election officials to ensure that electoral technologies were deployed properly and that officials were equipped to respond to technical challenges during elections.
They also recommended that the findings of independent audits of electoral technologies be made available to the public.
According to them, public access to credible audit findings would enable Nigerians and other stakeholders to better understand the strengths and vulnerabilities of the systems being relied upon to conduct elections.
The panel maintained that privacy protection should be treated as an integral component of electoral integrity rather than as an impediment to transparency.
The experts argued that as technology assumed an increasingly central role in Nigeria’s electoral process, public confidence would depend not merely on assurances that the systems were operational but on evidence that they were secure, independently verifiable and subject to effective oversight.
They therefore urged stakeholders, particularly INEC and relevant regulatory institutions, to address technological, privacy, infrastructural and procedural vulnerabilities well ahead of the 2027 elections.
With Nigeria already preparing for the next general elections, the experts said rebuilding confidence in the electoral process would require demonstrable safeguards showing that the technology, institutions operating it and personal information entrusted to them were subject to independent scrutiny and accountability.
They stressed that credible elections required not only functional technology but also public trust in the systems, institutions and processes through which electoral decisions were recorded and transmitted.
