By Osaretin Osadebamwen
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar has raised alarm over the use of an outdated operating system on Nigeria’s Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS).
In a statement issued by his Media Office in Abuja on Tuesday, Atiku warned that reliance on Android version 10, which reached end‑of‑life in 2023, could expose the electoral process to cybersecurity and operational risks ahead of the 2027 general elections.
Atiku’s concerns follow failures recorded during the Osun State mock accreditation exercise and comments by INEC’s Director of ICT, Dr. Lawrence Bayode, who confirmed BVAS still runs on Android 10.
He argued that outdated software leaves BVAS vulnerable to cyberattacks, data manipulation, and application crashes during heavy usage.
Atiku also highlighted risks in biometric verification accuracy and the transmission of polling unit results over public networks to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal.
Calling INEC’s handling of BVAS “suspicious,” Atiku urged for an independent audit of the hardware and software.
He stressed that critical national infrastructure should not operate on obsolete systems, warning that failure to upgrade could undermine election integrity.
Atiku questioned why INEC, with what he described as its substantial budget, had not upgraded the BVAS software ahead of the 2027 general elections or used forthcoming off-cycle elections, including the Osun governorship election, to test an updated version.
He described what he called INEC’s handling of the BVAS issue as “suspicious” and alleged that it could undermine the integrity of the country’s elections.
According to him, vulnerabilities in an outdated operating system could potentially be exploited by cybercriminals to gain unauthorised access to devices and tamper with stored voter accreditation or polling unit result data before transmission.
He also raised concerns about the transmission of polling unit results over public telecommunications networks to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal.
Atiku said outdated security and cryptographic components could increase exposure to cyber threats, including attempts to intercept, block or manipulate data transmitted between polling units and the result-viewing platform.
The former Vice President further expressed concern about the biometric functions of BVAS, which uses fingerprint and facial recognition for voter accreditation.
He argued that an outdated biometric framework could affect the system’s accuracy and resilience against attempts to circumvent its verification processes.
Atiku also warned that software defects associated with legacy systems could lead to application crashes, particularly during periods of heavy usage, potentially causing delays in voter accreditation.
He said he supported calls by cybersecurity experts for an independent and comprehensive audit of the BVAS hardware and software ahead of the 2027 elections.
