Digital tech was meant to save Nigeria's election. What went wrong?

As attention turns to opposition parties' petition against Nigeria's disputed 2023 presidential election, it is time to revisit the failure of BVAS - the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System. Intended to protect the election from rigging, the technology failed less because of the equipment itself and more because of deliberate subversion by those entrusted to manage the process.

BVAS was supposed to safeguard democracy. At the registration stage, it serves as a voter enrollment device, while at the voting stage, it performs the dual function of accrediting voters and transmitting the results to IREV - the Independent National Electoral Commission's Results Viewing Portal. By using finger print and facial identity to prevent multiple or underage voting, and providing a secure way for results to be transmitted, BVAS and IREV were meant to reduce the scope of manipulation.

What went wrong? In the main, the BVAS kits worked well in accrediting voters. The real problems began when it came to transmitting election results to the IREV portal in real time. Partly as a result of poor communication of likely timelines, and partly due to unexplained delays,  results were slow to start coming in - and never did in some areas. 

Why was this process so haphazard? First, the electoral commission spent too little time training officials. Second, the commission effectively lost control over officials in some areas, and due process was not followed. A parallel vote tabulation conducted by Yiaga, for example, found results in Rivers and Imo states did not match their data, and some officials had operated in a partisan way. 

In response, we must not throw the baby away with the bathwater. In countries such as Kenya , it took many iterations to the technology to work well. Rather than abandoning the system, Nigeria need to focus on improving the "human" aspect in its elections, so that the technology works as intended.