Presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, has sounded an alarm over the use of an “outdated” operating system on the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) ahead of the 2027 general election.
In a statement issued by his media office on Tuesday, Atiku said the mock accreditation failures recorded during the August 1 Osun governorship election exercise, coupled with recent comments by Lawrence Bayode, director of ICT at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), had exposed vulnerabilities in the electoral technology.
Bayode had said on Arise Television on Monday that BVAS, which was first introduced into Nigeria’s elections in 2021, currently runs on Android version 10.
Atiku said what was omitted from Bayode’s disclosure was that Android version 10 had reached its end of life in 2023 and no longer receives updates or security patches.
Atiku stated that using an outdated operating system to run critical election technology could expose the system to cyber and operational risks.
“Why INEC with its humongous budget cannot update the BVAS software long before the 2027 general elections or even before the series of off-season elections like the Osun State governorship election during which the updated version would have been test run,” Atiku said.
He alleged that criminal elements or hackers could potentially gain access to the device’s file system and alter cached voter logs or polling-unit result files before transmission.
He said election technology required regular upgrades and independent scrutiny to ensure public confidence in the electoral process.
“Running critical national infrastructure on an end-of-life operating system creates a broad attack surface,” he said.
“To safeguard election integrity, it is vital to perform an independent, comprehensive code and hardware audit of the BVAS devices.”
