A former national commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, Festus Okoye, has disclosed that the commission’s digital platforms were targeted by cyberattacks during the 2023 presidential election.
Okoye made the disclosure during an interview on Deep Insights, a podcast hosted by Austin Agbonsuremi.
Ahead of the 2023 elections, INEC had assured Nigerians that results from polling units would be uploaded to its Result Viewing Portal, IReV, allowing voters, political parties, candidates, observers and other stakeholders to access scanned copies of result sheets.
However, the platform remained unavailable for a prolonged period after voting had ended at several polling units during the presidential election, fuelling concerns and suspicions among Nigerians.
Okoye said the commission encountered technical difficulties while attempting to upload results and initially expected the problem to be resolved within minutes. Instead, the disruption persisted.
“What really happened was that the technology malfunctioned. That is the truth of the matter. For me, technology disappointed us. I said, okay, we need to tell Nigerians that this is the difficulty we are having and that we are trying to fix it,” he said.
According to Okoye, a statement was subsequently prepared to explain the situation, but he objected to the technical terminology used in describing the problem.
“And that was how the issue of glitch came into the equation,” he said.
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The former INEC commissioner for voter education said the incident was particularly frustrating because of the extensive preparations that had preceded the election.
He also disclosed that INEC’s digital platforms came under several cyberattacks during the election period.
“I know that there were all sorts of cyberattacks on our platforms during that particular period,” he said.
Okoye, however, said he could not determine whether the cyberattacks were responsible for the difficulties experienced with IReV.
“Whether those cyberattacks influenced what happened at the end of the day, I’m not in a position to say,” he said.
He added that INEC’s deputy director responsible for information and communications technology, ICT, later appeared before the election petition tribunal to explain what happened during the election.