Presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, has called for an independent audit of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) ahead of Saturday’s governorship election in Osun State.
His demand followed technical glitches reported during the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) mock accreditation exercise in the state on August 1, 2026, and the disclosure that its BVAS devices run on Android 10.
INEC’s Director of Information and Communication Technology, Dr Lawrence Bayode, made the disclosure during an Arise Television interview on Monday, August 10.
He said the devices were deployed with the operating system but stressed that INEC had additional security measures protecting BVAS.
In a statement on Tuesday, August 11, Atiku argued that Android 10 reached end-of-life status in 2023 and questioned why INEC had not upgraded the platform despite funding for electoral technology.
He warned that vulnerabilities in aging software could expose BVAS devices, voter data and electronic result transmission to cyber threats.
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He also raised concerns about biometric verification through fingerprints and facial recognition, saying technical failures could disrupt accreditation.
Atiku urged INEC to subject the BVAS hardware, software and underlying code to an independent security review, particularly ahead of the 2027 general election.
The concerns revive wider scrutiny of Nigeria’s electronic election infrastructure following the 2023 general election, when technical problems affected the uploading of polling-unit results to INEC’s Result Viewing Portal, IReV.
Although INEC acknowledged the transmission difficulties, it maintained that they did not alter the results declared from physical polling-unit result sheets.
BVAS and IReV have since remained central to INEC’s efforts to strengthen voter accreditation and improve electoral transparency.
With another mock exercise exposing technical difficulties in Osun on August 1, Saturday’s poll will provide a fresh test of the system as INEC prepares for the 2027 general election.