Former Vice President and ADC presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has raised concerns over the use of outdated technology in the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) ahead of the 2027 general elections.
Atiku’s concerns followed failures recorded during the Osun State mock accreditation exercise on August 1, 2026, and comments by the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) Director of ICT, Dr Lawrence Bayode.
Bayode disclosed during an interview on Arise TV on Monday that the BVAS devices introduced in Nigeria’s elections in 2021 are currently running on Android version 10.
Atiku, however, said Android 10 reached its end of life in 2023 and no longer receives regular updates or security patches.
He warned that using an outdated operating system for a critical election platform could expose the devices to serious cybersecurity and operational risks.
According to him, INEC has sufficient resources to upgrade the BVAS technology before the 2027 elections, or use forthcoming off-cycle elections, including the Osun governorship poll, to test an updated system.
The ADC candidate described INEC’s handling of the issue as suspicious, alleging that the failure to address the vulnerabilities could undermine the integrity of future elections.
Atiku said hackers could potentially exploit weaknesses in the outdated system to gain access to device files and manipulate cached voter accreditation logs or polling unit result files before transmission.
He also raised concerns about the transmission of election results through public telecommunications networks to the INEC Result Viewing portal, IReV.
According to him, outdated security and encryption systems could increase the risk of cyberattacks, including attempts to intercept, block or manipulate election data during transmission.
Atiku further warned that the outdated biometric framework used by BVAS could affect the accuracy of fingerprint and facial recognition.
He said weaknesses in the legacy system could also make the devices more vulnerable to spoofing attempts.
The former Vice President added that software bugs and memory leaks could cause BVAS devices to crash during peak voting periods, resulting in accreditation delays and technical failures.
Atiku therefore backed calls by cybersecurity experts for an independent and comprehensive audit of BVAS hardware and software.
He said the audit was necessary to identify vulnerabilities and ensure that Nigeria’s election technology is secure, reliable and capable of supporting credible elections in 2027.
The statement was signed by the Atiku Media Office in Abuja on August 11, 2026.
