Consider a UFC or boxing arena; there is a heavyweight champion, who keeps winning the re-match every season, no matter how hard his challenger tries. This time, the challenger pulls out a new tactic; something drastic, hoping to give a final knock-out to this all-time opponent. Whether he would win depends on two things: one, how perfect he has mastered the tactic — because you cannot take out the champion with poorly-thought-through gambits, you have to master your art; and two, whether the enemy hasn’t already updated his tactics to out-wit our dear challenger.
This analysis may be too late for Israel Adesanya who lost for the third time to Alex Pereira on Saturday night but it can still prove useful for Nigeria and INEC’s fight against electoral malpractice.
Imagine the UFC arena is Nigerian elections; the heavyweight champion is the mammoth of electoral malpractices that has continually bedevilled our democracy; our dear challenger is the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC); and its new tactic is electoral technology. Nigeria’s electoral system has for years been unable to defeat electoral malpractice and fraud. With another chance in its hands, INEC, this time, is holding a sledgehammer: technology — hoping to give a final knockout to electoral malpractice once and for all and restore credibility to Nigeria’s electoral system.
Would INEC’s technology punches be the tactic that takes out the giant of politically organised election fraud?. Or would it be like Anthony Joshua’s failure to land efficient and powerful punches on Oleksandr Usyk in that Rage on the Red Sea battle, losing again to Usyk, despite high hopes? The devil is in the details.
There are 2 key technologies INEC aims to use for the forthcoming elections: the BVAS and the IREV. There is a third one because BVAS works hand in hand with another technology device; the IVED. While there are concerns about how INEC can efficiently deploy 2-3 electoral technologies at once (an entirely different discussion), these technologies have the potential to specifically address the lapses in INEC’s voting procedures and election results management, broadly. Let’s take a quick look at INEC’s tactics — the technology tools the commission is deploying for the 2023 elections.
BVAS
1. The Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS): In simple terms, the BVAS is an authenticator device which is used for identifying and accrediting voter’s biometric information. The device captures voters’ fingerprints and facial identity and matches it with existing information on the voters’ register. It is also used to capture images of election results sheets from each polling unit (PU) and to upload those results in real-time on the election results portal. So far, INEC has deployed the device in 3 off-cycle governorship elections (Anambra, Ekiti, and Osun elections) as well as the FCT Area Council elections earlier this year.
How does it work?
Essentially, the BVAS is an upgrade to the use of Smart Card Readers (SCR) which has been used in previous elections to verify voters’ identity by scanning the microchip embedded on Permanent Voters’ Card. But BVAS is much more impressive; while SCR can verify any card presented and registered in a polling unit regardless of whether it is being used by the rightful owner, BVAS ensures that the actual PVC bearer is the one being verified.
The most important function of the device is that it is synced with INEC’s Voter Enrolment Device (IVED) – the technology that was used to register voters in the first place. On actual voting day, the BVAS captures voters’ fingerprints (and where this fails, facial image is captured). Since every voter is already registered with INEC, their facial or fingerprint identity automatically matches their existing information on INEC’s database. The IVED and BVAS are technically the same thing, with the latter being an extension of the former and deployed only on election day (E-day).
INEC has recorded some meaningful successes with the BVAS in Osun and Ekiti. The key challenge for the commission in 2023 is ensuring that the BVAS is sufficient and that it works with minimal or no glitches. That would be a punch well landed on voting fraud!
2. INEC Election Result Viewing Portal (IREV): The IREV is a live portal that enables the public to view election results in real-time, after results have been collated in each polling unit and uploaded. The key goal of the platform is to enhance election results management and boost citizens’ trust in the process. Hitherto, every election cycle in Nigeria has witnessed some form of controversy on the transmission of results across each hierarchical collation level (PU ——Ward ——LG——State).
Primarily, the IREV is simply a ‘technology replacement’ for the Form EC60E, which is a copy of Form EC8A (result sheet). Previously, the Form EC60E was a public version of the result sheet, which is pasted in each polling unit after votes have been counted and collated. With Form EC60E, voters would usually take pictures of the results and circulate on the internet, in a reasonable attempt to keep the public informed of voting updates in their units. But this process was amenable to fraud and digital manipulation; for instance, during the 2019 elections, citizens circulated several fake spreadsheets acclaimed as election results.
Now, the IREV replaces the Form EC60E, making it possible for the public (not just voters in a polling unit) to have direct access to results coming from every polling unit, ward, LGA and state collation centres, before the results are declared by INEC.
There are however a couple of things to note with the IREV. First, INEC has stated that the IREV by no means suggests electronic collation of results; election results would still be manually collated and recorded on paper across different polling units. The implication of this is that results sheets are still manipulable and could even somehow be obliterated or destroyed by desperate political actors, in the absence of very integrous INEC staff and security officials.
Secondly, while the IREV helps boost public confidence in election results, it does not account for the more than 50% of Nigerians who lack the digital skills to engage with a technology as basic as a results portal. Even where the skills exist, as social media’s influence in elections have grown, citizens now heavily source election-related news from social media. Quite possibly, many voters would still be vulnerable to election disinformation and misinformation online. But the IREV remains a good development, regardless.
Needless to say, priority for INEC should be investing in strong cybersecurity techniques to prevent hacking; commendably the commission was able to ward off several hacking attempts on the IREV portal during the Osun and Ekiti elections.
If INEC successfully gets many citizens onboard with IREV, secures the portal against cyberattacks, and ensures consistency between PU results and IREV updates, then the commission would have landed an even harder punch on the ‘heavyweight champion’ of electoral malpractice.
Indeed, back to the boxing arena in 2023!
In the lead up to what is shaping up to be an epic boxing tournament in 2023, Dataphyte will be to you what Paul Lampley or Paulie Malignaggi is to a boxing match or what Peter Drury is to football; providing important commentary and explainers, so you don’t miss important moments.