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The presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, has raised an alarm over what he alleged to be the use of an “outdated” operating system on the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) ahead of the 2027 general election.
Speaking in a statement released on Tuesday by his media office, the former vice president stated that vulnerabilities in the electoral technology had been exposed, thanks to 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).
While appearing on Arise on Monday, Bayode had said BVAS, which was first introduced into Nigeria’s elections in 2021, currently runs on Android version 10.
According to Atiku, Bayode, in his disclosure, omitted that Android version 10 had reached its end of life in 2023 and no longer receives updates or security patches.
Atiku added 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? ”
“Running critical national infrastructure on an end-of-life operating system creates a broad attack surface.
“To safeguard election integrity, it is vital to perform an independent, comprehensive code and hardware audit of the BVAS devices,” the statement reads partly.
