Civic technology seeks to make Nigeria’s election results easier to track

Artificial intelligence and civic technology are changing how election results can be tracked in Nigeria, where the public has historically found the counting process difficult to inspect. Before the 2023 general election, polling-unit results were recorded on paper and moved through collation centres at ward, local government and state levels. Presiding officers used Form EC8A, which remains the primary collation document when electronic transmission is unavailable.

The Independent National Electoral Commission introduced its Result Viewing Portal, known as IReV, in 2020. It enabled citizens to view photographs of polling-unit result sheets online as the collation process continued, creating a publicly accessible record without replacing manual collation. The portal has nevertheless presented practical difficulties.

Results are generally uploaded as images of handwritten forms, meaning that comparing thousands of documents and adding the figures manually can take days or weeks. A review by Premium Times of 1,116 of 1,211 polling units in Rivers State’s Obio/Akpor local government area found a major difference between figures recorded on many polling-unit forms and figures declared by INEC. The review also reported apparent alterations and mutilations on some documents.

Civic-tech companies including Dataphyte and Mundx Analytics are seeking to address this gap. Their systems process and present results in near real time, while retaining links to the original forms so users can check the underlying evidence. The technology could make results easier to understand while collation is under way.

However, the material also suggests that scrutiny will still be needed before voting and at polling units, including over vote-buying, intimidation, violence and voter suppression.