Nigerians were at their various designated polling units on Saturday, February 25, 2023 and elected those they trust to pilot their affairs at two different strata of government for the next four years as enshrined in the operating 1999 constitution of the country (as amended).
As we all know, democracy thrives on the willingness and ability of the people to participate in the political process. The political environment is expected to be free from inhibitions that obstruct freedom of expression. Political participation, political culture and political education are all critical elements of successful democracy. Technology is increasingly playing an invaluable role in encouraging citizens to participate actively in the political process. It makes information dissemination easy and fast.
Thus, political culture and political education are simultaneously being promoted by technology. Politicians have begun to deploy technology in their electioneering activities.
Nowadays, candidates and most politicians use the social media to attract supporters and courtship. Every clever aspirant uses the Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp to engage and influence the electorate. The same technology is also used to distribute contents that can put their opponents in bad light.
Furthermore, the electoral commission has started relying heavily on technology in the administration of elections in Nigeria. Technology is used to capture the biometric features of voters, manage the register of voters and verify the identity of voters on Election Day. To a very large extent, technology has eliminated the incidence of ghost voters and under aged children.
In spite of the aforementioned benefits, technology can also serve negative political purposes. On one hand, the country has so far made significant progress in recent years in improving the transparency and integrity of its electoral system. However, on the other hand, a number of multidimensional security threats continue to undermine the stability and legitimacy of the electoral process.
One of the most significant challenges that faced the concluded presidential and national assembly elections was the threat of political violence and intimidation. This took many forms including the use of armed groups to intimidate voters, the use of state security forces to suppress opposition parties, the use of INEC ad-hoc personnel to falsify results, and the use of propaganda and disinformation to manipulate public opinion. All of these tactics can undermine the integrity of the electoral process and confidence of voters in the fairness and legitimacy of the election.
Another major challenge is the threat of cyber attacks and interference. With the increasing reliance on electronic voting systems and the growing use of social media platforms to spread information and propaganda, the risk of cyber attacks and manipulation of the electoral process has increased significantly. This can include the use of social media bots and trolls to spread false information and propaganda as well as the targeting of critical infrastructure, such as election servers, to disrupt the electoral process.
As Nigeria anticipates a more transparent election, the Electoral Act 2022 (as amended), has transferred the mandate of introducing technology into the electioneering process to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Although voting will still be cast manually via the ballot paper casting and open secret voting method. These technologies were introduced at the pre-election, election and post-election stages.
For each of the stages one of the four interdependent technologies will be applied: Voters Enrolment Device (IVED); Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS); Bimodal Voters Accreditation System (BVAS) and INEC Result Viewing (IReV).
However, the tribunal judgment in the gubernatorial election of Osun State is a vindication that BVAS only lost the vote count and not the election. There is a high tendency that cyber attacks will be focused on both the BVAS and IReV. The objective of a cyber attack on the BVAS will be to prevent the snapped results sheet from being transmitted to INEC Server. A cyber attack on the IReV portal may include modification of the results on the portal or the disruption of the IReV portal from the public.
Notwithstanding, the modification of the results sheet may only be possible with the cooperation of a malicious insider, but disruption can be done with or without a malicious insider. The potency of risk that INEC should mitigate before the March 11th elections lies, heavily in the possibility of both the cyber and political actors having an insider within INEC.
There is a slim connection between the BVAS and IReV portal which is the transmission of results. However, the technological process for transmitting the captured election result sheet is a complex one in the IReV portal. There is need to ensure that the integrity of the captured result sheet is secured. The introduction of technology in the electioneering process now means that the concerns, in addition to INEC ad-hoc personnel, will now include the technological devices that will ensure the process is transparent. While it will be difficult or impossible to bring down all the personnel before the election. It is quiet easy to bring down the technologies using a denial of service attack methodology.
Social engineering and insider threat is generally the most important and difficult threat to handle because it is focused on personnel to be used during the electioneering process. All the technological threats outlined above somehow depend on social engineering and insider threat to be easily and effectively carried out.
One major security threat is the use of cyber attacks to disrupt the electoral process. This can include hacking into voter databases, manipulating voter registration systems, and spreading misinformation on the credibility of the election and lead to confusion and mistrust among voters.
Physical violence is another significant security threat in Nigeria’s elections. This can include attacks on polling stations, voter intimidation and violence against candidates and their supporters. These acts of violence can create a sense of fear and insecurity among voters, leading to low turnout and potential manipulation of the election outcome.
As already observed, some senseless and pompous state governors, either denied opposing political parties access to public facilities for electioneering campaign (such as stadia, schools etc) in their respective states, or use of administrative instruments like Executive Orders to fix exorbitant fees for use of those public facilities beyond believe to deter opposition from use of those facilities.
From public opinion, Nigeria’s anti-graft agencies should partner with INEC to evolve a robust collaborative mechanism for monitoring of political and electoral financing in Nigeria. Such collaborative frameworks should be deployed towards preventing and punishing corrupt practices such as vote buying, and ‘generous’ gifts of automobile, motorcycles, sewing machines, assorted foodstuffs, clothing, detergents etc to voters. In addition, voter education campaigns should be expanded to counteract the effects of vote buying and other cleverly introduced malpractices on voter behavior.
Also, state security and intelligence outfits need to discreetly and proactively neutralize violent youth wings or militias of politicians and political parties to prevent their mobilization or deployment for political thuggery and election related violence. This requires timely conduct of threat assessment, profiling of criminal elements or political thugs, proactive deployment for visibility policing, and strategic communication to counter violent incentives and narratives.
Lastly, civil society organizations and media practitioners should initiate robust engagement with government agencies to evolve an acceptable guideline as a useful framework for promoting a culture of responsible use of social media in Nigeria. This will encourage users to exercise due diligence to avoid perpetrating unwholesome acts or sharing content in the social media that is capable of creating tension and violence before, during and after the elections as experienced in recent elections.
Hate speech and other unruly behaviors and comments posted on social media platforms targeted at opposition candidates should not only attract a heavy fine but a heavy penalty to serve as deterrent.
Without prejudice to the declaration of Bola Ahmed Tinubu as the duly elected president of Nigeria from the February 25, 2023 presidential election with total votes of 8,794,726 votes but without defeating his opponents in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), where then goes Section 133(b), last paragraph of the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended)? Was the Section amended before the February 25th presidential election by INEC to have encouraged it to commit such a constitutional blunder? As laymen in law, we are watching!
Muhammad is a commentator on national issues
