In a high-stakes X Space hosted by the Stakeholders in Blockchain Technology Association of Nigeria (SiBAN), industry experts argued that the next logical step for Nigeria is not just digital transmission, but immutable transmission via blockchain.

The consensus? Blockchain isn’t a magic wand for politics, but it is a technical shield for data integrity.

The Confidence Infrastructure

Oluwaseun Dania, CEO of Alpha-Geek Technologies, hit the nail on the head regarding the root cause of voter apathy: the fear that votes disappear in the black box between polling units and collation centers.

“The real opportunity is actually much simpler. Blockchain is not there to change how Nigerians vote, but to technically protect the integrity of the votes that are cast. People will be more confident knowing that as they are casting their votes, the results are being recorded on the blockchain, visible to everybody all over the world,” Dania explained.

Dania isn’t calling for a 100% e-voting overhaul overnight, which would be a hard sell given Nigeria’s internet penetration gaps. Instead, he proposes a hybrid model:

• On-Chain Registers: Moving National Identification Numbers (NIN) and voter registers to a blockchain to prevent ghost voting.
• Immutable Transmission: Using blockchain specifically for the audit trail of results, ensuring no data is doctored during transit.

Solving the Gas Fee and Technical Bottleneck

A common critique of blockchain is the cost of transactions (gas fees) and technical complexity. Harry Ugorji, CEO of Egoras Technology, proposed a localized infrastructure where polling agents don’t need to be crypto-experts or pay for gas.

“They have to scan the EC8A form. Once they scan and upload, there should be an AI-based layer that extracts that information and transmits it to the smart contracts. This data can be saved using IPFS (InterPlanetary File System) so that at every point in time, everybody can verify that data,” Ugorji stated.

By using IPFS for decentralized storage and an AI-layer for data extraction, the process removes human error and ensures that the uploaded image of a result matches the data on the ledger permanently.

INEC’s Tech Evolution: The Pre-Registration Play

Representing INEC Lagos, Mr. Taiwo Gbadegesin (via Mr. Ayopo Lawal) shifted the focus to the foundation of elections: the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR). INEC is already leaning into digital efficiency to solve the fatigue problem that often leads to data errors.

“This system allows Nigerians, including those currently abroad, to initiate their registration, request card transfers to closer polling units, or update personal details like marital name changes from their mobile devices,” Lawal explained.

By allowing users to handle their own data entry, INEC aims for 100% accuracy. The goal is to reduce the physical visit to a mere five-minute biometric capture:

“This streamlined approach reduces the time spent at the center to under five minutes, significantly easing the burden on both the public and INEC officials while ensuring the electoral roll remains robust and up-to-date.”

A Sandbox Approach

The biggest takeaway from the SiBAN session is the call for Micro-Testing. Before deploying blockchain for a Presidential election, the experts suggest using it for:

1. University Student Union (SUG) Elections.
2. Secondary School Representative Polls.
3. Political Party Primaries.

The bottom line is that technology is ready; the hurdle is political and regulatory will. For blockchain to fix Nigeria’s elections, the government must be willing to embrace a system where data, once recorded, is beyond the reach of any central authority to alter.

Until the Black Box of collation is replaced by a Transparent Ledger, voter apathy may remain Nigeria’s biggest electoral opponent.

Sensitive materials, according to Punch report, including ballot papers and result sheets, arrived in Edo State on Wednesday via Benin Airport and were transported to secure storage facilities under tight security.

This comes as the 17 political parties participating in the poll are slated to end their campaign today.

The All Progressives Congress candidate Senator Monday Okpebholo, Asue Ighodalo of the Peoples Democratic Party and Olumide Akpata of the Labour Party are the leading contenders ahead of the ballot.

INEC officials and security personnel supervised the transportation of the election materials to ensure accountability.

“More than 5,000 BVAS devices will be deployed for the Edo State governorship election. BVAS is a sensitive election material. It will be deployed tomorrow (today) with other sensitive materials,” one of the INEC officials disclosed.

INEC is preparing to ensure a smooth and efficient electoral process across the state’s 4,519 polling units and 211 collation centres, which include 192 ward centres, 18 local government collation centres, and the state collation centre in Benin City.

As part of its preparation for the polls, INEC has increased its financial support to transport unions for the election logistics.

Additionally, the commission has been engaging with various stakeholders ranging from political parties and civil society groups to community leaders—to ensure that the electoral process is transparent and inclusive.

It was further learnt that the commission would deploy more than 18,000 ad-hoc staff for the poll.

Based on INEC’s staffing structure, each of the 4,519 polling units in Edo State will require a team of four officers, comprising a Presiding Officer and three Assistant Presiding Officers (APO I, II, and III), totaling 18,076 ad-hoc staff.

In addition to the POs and APOs, INEC will also dispatch Supervisory Presiding Officers to manage operations at various polling units across the state.

In a move to ensure a hitch-free exercise, the Nigeria Police Force has announced that it is expecting over 8,000 security personnel from other agencies to join the 35,000 officers already deployed for the Edo State governorship election.

The Nigerian economy has been subsided in various ways for many years and this includes fuel, education, electricity, forex etc.

Fuel subsidies began in the 1970s and became institutionalised in 1977, following the promulgation of the Price Control Act which made it illegal for some products (including petrol) to be sold above the regulated price.

While the concept of subsidy itself is noble, its administration in Nigeria has been plagued with serious allegations of corruption and mismanagement.

In June 2022, the Managing Director of NNPC Limited indicated that daily consumption of PMS had increased to over 103 million litres per day and that at least 58 million litres were being smuggled.

This means that smugglers and other West African countries benefit more from fuel subsidy than Nigerians.

Trillions of dollars have been spent to subsidize fuel import including crude swap deals.

On his inauguration on May 29, 2023, President Bola Tinubu announced that ‘Fuel Subsidy is gone’. This announcement by the President has spiral to several economic shocks.

However, apart from What is Fuel Subsidy, here are some other queries on Google as released in the search trends 2023:

• What Is The Meaning Of Idan
• What Is Autopsy
• What Is The Meaning Of Idan In Yoruba
• What Is The Cause Of Mohbad Death
• What Is The Meaning Of Body Count
• What Is The National Flower Of Nigeria
• What Is Bvas
• What Is Bell’s Palsy
• What Is Cryptic Pregnancy

Also read: Google: iPhone, Tecno, Infinix, Redmi, itel Dominate Devices Search in 2023

[Featured Image Credit]

The Group requested the introduction of legal timelines for testing new electoral technology into Nigeria’s electoral

legal framework during their verification media conference on the recently concluded Presidential and National Assembly elections.

A comprehensive audit and inquiry were also requested by Yiaga Afrito to identify the causes of the delay in the online upload of election results.

Yiaga Africa further Condemned the cases of violence and disruption of the voting and results collation process by thugs and hoodlums, especially the violence targeted at National Youth Service Corp (NYSC) members and INEC staff.

According to agent statistics from the major parties, Obi’s LP (Obi) has 134,874 agents, ADC has 96,034, Atiku’s PDP has 176,974 agents, Tinubu’s APC has 176,974 agents, and the other 14 parties have 1,081,358 agents.

Meanwhile, (INEC) said it has sufficient Bimodal Voter Registration Systems (BVAS) to conduct elections in the 176,846 polling units nationwide.

BVAS is a device introduced by INEC that allows for the accreditation of voters through biometrics capture, the uploading of polling results, and other functions.

According to INEC National Commissioner, Festus Okoye: “The BVAS, which we said will be the game-changer in relation to this election, is in place.

“And I want to confirm that we have a sufficient number of BVAS that will be used in the conduct of elections in the 176,846 polling units across this country,” he said.

The INEC commissioner said ad-hoc staff will be trained in the effective usage of the BVAS.

“We want to train our ad-hoc staff longer so that we won’t have people not knowing how to use the BVAS and blaming it on technology and so on.

“We are also harvesting the names and details of those that will serve as our ad-hoc staff. For the two elections, the national and state elections, we are going to engage over 1.4 million ad-hoc staff and we are going to train them,” he said.

Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, Chairman of INEC, made the announcement following a meeting with political parties in Abuja on Monday.

Yakubu recalled that the Commission had made efforts to redistribute voters to polling units in order to avoid the congestion that had made voting difficult in many of them across the country.

This, he claims, necessitates the redistribution of voters to new polling units in nearby locations.

“Where they are separated by distance, this must be done after consultation with the voters. This has been done by our state offices nationwide. However, there are 240 polling units without registered voters spread across 28 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

“They range from one polling unit to 12 polling units in each state and the FCT, except for Taraba and Imo States, with 34 and 38 polling units, respectively.”

“No new registrants chose the polling units and no voters indicated interest to transfer to them during the last Continuous Voter Registration (CVR), mainly for security reasons. This means that no elections will hold in these polling units,” he said.

See the full statement below:

REMARKS BY THE CHAIRMAN, INDEPENDENT NATIONAL ELECTORAL COMMISSION (INEC), PROF. MAHMOOD YAKUBU, AT A MEETING WITH POLITICAL PARTIES HELD AT THE INEC CONFERENCE ROOM, ABUJA, ON MONDAY 13TH FEBRUARY 2023

The Chairmen and Leaders of Political Parties

National Commissioners

Directors and other Senior Officials of the Commission

Members of the INEC Press Corps

Ladies and Gentlemen

I warmly welcome you all to this meeting. We appreciate that you are in the middle of your electioneering campaigns nationwide and yet found time to attend this meeting despite the short notice. We thank you for your presence and wish to assure you that the meeting will not be long so that you can resume your campaigns and other activities toward the 2023 General Election.

We have consistently assured the leaders of political parties that the Commission will regularly consult you to bring you up to date on the preparations for the forthcoming elections

Let me, therefore, start with the issue of polling units. You may recall that in 2021, with your support and that of other critical stakeholders, the Commission successfully expanded voter access to polling units 25 years after the last delimitation exercise in 1996. Consequently, the number of polling units increased from 119,973 to the current figure of 176,846.

At previous meetings, we also briefed you on our efforts to redistribute voters to the polling units to avoid the congestion that made voting cumbersome in many of them nationwide. This requires the redistribution of voters to new polling units in proximate locations. Where they are separated by distance, this must be done after consultation with the voters.

This has been done by our State offices nationwide. However, there are 240 polling units without registered voters spread across 28 States and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). They range from one polling unit to 12 polling units in each State and the FCT, except Taraba and Imo States with 34 and 38 polling units respectively. No new registrants chose the polling units and no voters indicated interest to transfer to them during the last Continuous Voter Registration (CVR), mainly for security reasons. This means that no elections will hold in these polling units.

In our avowed commitment to transparency, the Commission is making available to Nigerians a comprehensive list of these polling units by name, code number, and their locations by State, Local Government, and Registration Area. With this development, the number of polling units where elections will hold nationwide on 25th February 2023 and 11th March 2023 is now 176,606.

Hard copies of the list are included in your folders for this meeting. Above all, Nigerians deserve the right to know the locations of these polling units. Accordingly, the soft copy of the list has been uploaded to our website and social media platforms for public information and guidance.

Closely related to the distribution of voters is the identification of polling units. From the feedback we received from our officials and accredited observers following the recent nationwide mock accreditation using the BVAS, it is clear that some voters could not easily identify their polling units.

This should not happen on election day. Consequently, the Commission is advising voters to confirm the locations of their polling units through a dedicated portal on our website. In addition, all voters who have been assigned to new polling units will receive text messages from the Commission indicating their polling units.

We have also compiled the register of such voters and our State offices will give it wide publicity, especially for those who may not have provided their telephone numbers during voter registration or those whose numbers may have changed. Voters can locate and confirm their polling units before election day by sending a regular text or WhatsApp message to a dedicated telephone number. Details of the simple procedure will be uploaded to our social media platforms shortly.

As you are already aware, we have less than two weeks to the 2023 General Election. The Commission is finalizing the issuance of 1,642,386 identification tags for the Polling and Collation Agents nominated by the 18 political parties made up of 1,574,301 Polling Agents and 68,085 Collation Agents.

I urge the Chairmen and leaders of political parties to ensure that only agents accredited by the Commission and wearing the correct identification tags appear at polling units and collation centers during elections.

A situation where two or more agents claim to represent a political party, resulting in commotion at polling units or collation centers, is unacceptable. Only Identification tags issued by the Commission will be recognized on election day and violators are liable to arrest and prosecution for impersonation.

Turning to the ongoing electioneering campaigns, the Commission is concerned about violent attacks on supporters of political parties across the board, resulting in the loss of life in some cases. Let me once again appeal to the Chairman and leaders of political parties to continue to call your candidates and supporters to order.

I also call on the security, intelligence, and law enforcement agencies to arrest, investigate and prosecute anyone involved in violent conduct, including incendiary statements capable of inciting a breach of the peace.

Once again, I welcome you to this meeting. Thank you and God bless.

Recall that, the Commission, precisely on February 4, conducted mock voter accreditation across Nigeria to test the efficacy of the BVAS in preparation for the Presidential and National Assembly elections on February 25.

Prof. Mahmood Yakubu, the Chairman of INEC, added that the machines used for the mock exercise would be reconfigured in preparation for the main elections.

But in a chat with TechEconomy, Prof. Adesina Sodiya, President of NCS, said identified INEC’s inability to work with IT professionals, particularly during the mock exercise, as a weak part on the part of the Commission.

He said that NCS’ major concern was to ensure effective functionality of the BVAS devices on the elections day.

ALSO READ: INEC says 2023 Elections will Cost N355bn

In his words:

“Nigeria Computer Society (NCS) as the umbrella body of IT practitioners in this country can be credited as the leading voice in the advocacy for the use of technology in our electoral processes. It is the way to go. So, we commend the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for its interest in technology adoption in the electoral processes.

“That said, it is important that the right things are done when you leveraging technology for anything. It is important to consider all issues around you and attend to them. Therefore, when INEC adopted BVAS (Bimodal Voter Registration System), we praised their bravely for adopting such system that allows the use of multiple biometrics authentication; if finger prints cannot be captured, they can resort to facial and other biometrics, so that the electorate is not disenfranchised. It is a good technology.

ALSO READ: INEC Confirms Delivery of BVAS Machines Nationwide

“But our case is how analytical is INEC with the system because no system is 100% safe-proof. There are levels of testing you must go through – robust, penetration, stress, availability; in fact, you have to trial all kinds of things you cannot even imagine will occur on the day you need the technology to serve the public”.

Referring to the Election Tribunal judgment on the recent Osun State Governorship election which raised eyebrows about over-voting, even with the use of BVAS, the NCS President said: “For some of us in the IT profession we knew there are possibilities of issues coming from the use of BVAS. That is why we continue to advice INEC to engage more professionals to offer advisories in some of the IT implementations. They have consultants, but for us it is not about the money rather how to put an end to failure of IT projects in the government circle. Any time an IT project fails we feel saddened. This is not to say that BVAS has failed in entirety, however, there are rooms for improvements even before we go into the general elections (this year).

“The only place you get correct advice is when you approach professional bodies like the Nigeria Computer Society. We are not coming to them for business; we want to contribute our skills towards the advancement of our country. The efficiency of BVAS is our major concern. We will continue to advocate for independent assessment of the technology being adopted for the elections.

Making reference to the mock BVAS accreditation exercise carried out by INEC across the country on Saturday, February 4, 2023, Prof. Sodiya said, “When you want to test a technology for a critical national assignment we need to ask INEC who helped them to design the testing processes. What kind of testing peocesses did they go through? You do not respond to calls for trial election just for the sake of fulfilling all righteousness. You need to be discrete about it. BVAS as a very good system, but no system is perfect or error-free”.

Speaking on a topic themed “understanding privacy and online risk in the digital world today,” to mark this year’s World Data Privacy Day, organized by the Data and Knowledge Privacy Protection Initiative.

ALSO READ: INEC says 2023 Elections will Cost N355bn

And February 25th, 2023 general election will be the first time in the history of the country that live data will be used to determine who will be the next president of the country.

According to Akano, the inferno that can burn us as a country is the use of live data that is vulnerable to attack, noting it is in the best interest of INEC in particular and Nigeria, in general, to pay more than casual attention to what we call the man in the middle attack, which hackers can exploit to intercept, modify, or retransmit election data while in motion or in transit.

He continued: “there is nothing more important in Nigeria today than the success of the February election, and we are a country of about 222 million, and nothing must go wrong because entire West African coast, from Benin Republic to Togo to Ghana, does not have the infrastructure to sustain us.”

Akano pointing out instances where conflicting results in other countries had lead to untold bloodbath, said between 2007 and 2008, Kenya witnessed an untold bloodbath arising from conflicting election results.

In 2010 and 2011, Mr. Devil himself took over the affairs of Ivory Coast when conflicting election results were announced. In 2016, Russia was alleged to have influenced the American presidential elections through technology, and in the recent Osun governorship Tribunal judgment, three types of BVAS results on the same election were alleged to have been tendered and this should not because Maths is exact, absolute.

According to the 2022 Securonix Threat, the report, reveals that insiders were involved in 57 per cent of data breaches and there are new technological solutions to this if INEC cares to prevent that.

While commending INEC for the end-to-end encryption they have done for the technology, however, call on INEC Chairman  on the need to urgently to talk to some Nigerian Cyber security practitioners and appoint some devil’s advocate who will conduct a stress test on BVAS DIM (Data- in- Motion) before the wholesale adoption on February 25th, saying it is common practice for big companies such as Microsoft and Oracle to carry out test on new develop software by  calling on strong hackers to test it and see if they can hack into it easily, and if they can, then they go back to their lab to ensure they work on it.

Akano, going forward, advised INEC to carry out an upgrade after the election to ensure that the issue of overvoting does not arise from BVAS by building in a technology that uses artificial intelligence (AI) which will alert you when overvoting arises from the pooling unit.

He made this disclosure while meeting with stakeholders in Abuja.

“I am pleased to announce that the movement of electoral materials to various locations across the country has been completed,” he stated.

According to him, the Commission has also inspected each machine in our offices around the country to confirm its functionality.

“The next step is to conduct field tests across the country involving actual voters. For this reason, and in readiness for nationwide deployment, the Commission is conducting a mock accreditation of voters similar to what was done ahead of the recent Ekiti and Osun State Governorship elections.”

Prof. Yakubu said the next line of action is to train officials while strengthening ongoing consultations with stakeholders will be intensified.

“Airlifting and delivery of sensitive materials to States of the Federation has gone far. Accreditation of national and international observers and the media is being finalized.

“Critical service providers in the area of transportation have reassured us of their commitment to efficient logistics for the movement of materials and personnel to various locations while the security agencies have reaffirmed their readiness for the election.”

PVC Collection

According to the INEC Chairman, the Commission is aware that there are a few issues to be addressed. One of them is the ongoing collection of Permanent Voters’ Cards (PVCs).

He said the Commission is encouraged by the determination of registered voters nationwide to collect their PVCs and the actual level of collection so far.

“For instance, in Lagos State, which has the highest number of registered voters in the country, the Commission delivered 940,200 PVCs from the recent voter registration exercise (June 2021 to July 2022) for both new registrants and requests for transfer and replacement of cards.

As of yesterday Thursday 26th January 2023, 839,720 PVCs have been collected representing 89.3% of the total figure.”

General elections will be held in Nigeria on 25 February 2023 to elect the President and Vice President and members of the Senate and House of Representatives

On Wednesday, he presented an estimated budget of N355 billion to the Senate Committee on INEC, which is chaired by the former Governor of Kano State Kabiru Gaya.

The INEC Chairman had stated that his commission would need N305 billion as estimated spending for the 2023 election when presenting his budget forecast before the Senate Committee on Appropriations in December, which was later approved.

However, Professor Yakubu stated in the National Assembly on Wednesday that INEC would require an additional N50 billion for its 2023 annual budget.

In the budget submitted to the Senator Gaya-led committee, the sum of N2.6 billion was earmarked for off-season governorship elections in Kogi, Imo and Bayelsa states, which had been scheduled for November 11, 2023. 

According to INEC, the N2.6 billion would be used on expenses such as printing of ballot papers, result sheets, forms and envelopes, logistics expenses, honorarium for officials, supervision, RAC preparation, and security/intervention support, among others. 

According to INEC, in the 2023 budget of the agency, N50 million will be spent to buy firefighting equipment, and motor vehicles – N150 million, and N250 million to repair offices and residential buildings.

The Commission is also expected to deploy over 200,000 Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) across the country for the 2023 general election