Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), has raised concerns over the use of what he described as an outdated operating system on the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), warning that it could expose the 2027 elections to cyber and operational risks.
Atiku’s concerns followed reported failures during the August 1 mock accreditation exercise in Osun State and comments by Lawrence Bayode, the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) Director of ICT, that BVAS currently runs on Android version 10.
In a statement issued by his media office on Tuesday, the former vice-president said Android 10 reached its end-of-life status in 2023 and no longer receives security updates or patches.
Atiku questioned why INEC, despite its substantial budget, had not upgraded the BVAS software ahead of the 2027 general election or tested an updated version during off-cycle elections.
“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,” he said.
He warned that vulnerabilities in an outdated operating system could potentially allow hackers to gain access to BVAS devices and alter cached voter accreditation logs or polling-unit result files before transmission.
Atiku also raised concerns about the transmission of polling-unit results to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal through public telecommunications networks, warning that outdated security protections could expose the process to interception or manipulation.
He further expressed concerns about the biometric functions of BVAS, saying outdated software could affect the reliability of fingerprint and facial recognition and increase the risk of technical failures during peak voting periods.
Describing the situation as a serious threat to electoral credibility, Atiku said, “Running critical national infrastructure on an end-of-life operating system creates a broad attack surface.”
He therefore called for an independent and comprehensive audit of the BVAS hardware, software, source code and security architecture.
“To safeguard election integrity, it is vital to perform an independent, comprehensive code and hardware audit of the BVAS devices,” Atiku said.
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