New details are emerging about the technology Nigeria’s electoral body plans to use for Saturday’s Osun governorship election. The picture is not reassuring for anyone worried about vote security.
According to Tech Next 24, INEC’s ICT Director confirmed that the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System runs on Android 10. This handheld device verifies voters through fingerprints and facial recognition. But that version of Google’s mobile operating system stopped receiving mainstream security updates in 2023. As a result, any vulnerabilities found since then have gone unpatched on machines set to authenticate millions of voters this weekend.
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This disclosure follows a rocky mock accreditation exercise held on August 1. Devices failed at multiple polling units during that test. A coalition of civil society organisations later demanded INEC explain the cause. They wanted to know whether the glitches came from software, hardware or configuration problems, as reported by Daily Post Nigeria. The group said many BVAS units stopped recognising fingerprints, facial features and voter cards. This happened less than 40 minutes into the exercise.
INEC, however, has pushed back against claims that its technology is unreliable. Commission Chairman Prof Joash Amupitan told journalists in Osogbo that the mock exercise actually proved something different. He said it showed the system could resist identity theft and results manipulation. Amupitan described the BVAS as robust and fully operational, per Tribune Online. He also said devices accredited voters in as little as 30 seconds during the test.
To guard against another failure, INEC has deployed 703 extra machines for the election. This brings the total number of BVAS units in Osun to 5,130, according to The Hope Newspaper.
Still, the Android 10 disclosure is not the only software question facing the commission. Oluwafemi Adebayo, head of research and strategy at Kimpact Development Initiative, raised a separate concern. He told ARISE Television that INEC’s own documents suggest the devices could actually be running Android 6 or Android 7. Those operating systems date back to 2015 and 2016, as reported by Sahara Reporters. If that claim holds up, the machines would be running software nearly a decade old. This raises further questions about processing power and resistance to intrusion, especially now that Android has moved well past version 17. So far, INEC has not addressed the gap between the ICT Director’s Android 10 statement and the older version suggested by its own paperwork.
Meanwhile, the stakes are higher this time because of a new rule in the amended electoral law. Under Section 47(3) of the 2026 Electoral Act, a failed BVAS device that cannot be replaced means voting at that unit must be cancelled outright. And if INEC decides the cancelled results could have changed the outcome, a fresh election must happen within 24 hours. Not the following week. Not folded into a supplementary process. That deadline would be tough to meet even in accessible areas. Osun has 12 local government areas that INEC itself has flagged as problematic, and some communities there are far from the nearest technical support.
INEC has also tried to calm public concern on other fronts. Amupitan addressed the recent theft of Permanent Voter Cards from commission offices in Okuku and Ife Central. He insisted stolen cards are useless without the legitimate owner’s live biometric verification. So the serial numbers of the stolen cards will be blacklisted. Affected voters will get reprinted or downloadable replacements approved for the election.
Even so, the software question is not going away. Osun is widely seen as a dress rehearsal for the 2027 general elections, and Amupitan has framed it that way himself. The commission insists its accreditation and result-uploading systems are working. It also says the issues from the mock exercise have been fixed. But one concern remains unresolved. Researchers and civil society groups keep asking the same thing. Can a voting technology built on outdated, unsupported software hold up on election day? Especially in a polling unit where nobody is nearby to fix it if something goes wrong.
