By Chibuike Nwabuko
ABUJA (PRECISE POST) – African Democratic Congress presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, has raised concerns over the use of an outdated Android operating system on the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), warning that the vulnerability could pose serious risks to the integrity of Nigeria’s elections.
Atiku, in a statement issued by his Media Office in Abuja on Tuesday, August 11, 2026, said the mock-accreditation failures recorded in Osun State on August 1 and Monday’s revelation by the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) Director of ICT, Dr Lawrence Bayode, had exposed what he described as inadequacies in the electoral technology.
Bayode had disclosed during an appearance on Arise TV on Monday that BVAS, introduced into Nigeria’s elections in 2021, currently runs on Android version 10.
Atiku, however, noted that Android 10 reached its end-of-life in 2023 and is no longer receiving updates or security patches.
The former Vice President argued that running a critical electoral technology platform on an outdated operating system could expose the devices to significant cybersecurity and operational risks.
He questioned why INEC, with its substantial budgetary allocation, had not upgraded the BVAS software ahead of the 2027 general elections or used forthcoming off-cycle elections, such as the Osun State governorship election, to test an upgraded system.
Atiku described INEC’s handling of the BVAS issue as “nonchalant” and suspicious, alleging that it could amount to a deliberate attempt to undermine the integrity of Nigeria’s elections.
According to him, vulnerabilities associated with an outdated operating system could potentially be exploited by cybercriminals to bypass the BVAS application, gain access to the device’s file system and tamper with cached voter 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 (IReV) portal.
Atiku warned that outdated cryptographic foundations could increase the risk of cyberattacks, including so-called Man-in-the-Middle attacks, in which malicious actors could potentially intercept, block or manipulate data during transmission.
The ADC presidential candidate further expressed concern over the biometric functions of the BVAS, which uses fingerprint and facial recognition for voter accreditation.
He argued that the use of outdated biometric frameworks could affect the accuracy and resilience of the system against potential spoofing techniques, including attempts to bypass fingerprint and facial recognition.
Atiku also warned that legacy system frameworks could be vulnerable to bugs and memory leaks capable of causing application crashes during peak voting periods, potentially resulting in technical glitches and delays in voter accreditation.
He therefore backed calls by cybersecurity experts for an independent and comprehensive audit of the BVAS hardware, software and underlying code before the 2027 elections.
The former Vice President stressed that critical national electoral infrastructure should not be allowed to operate on an end-of-life operating system, urging INEC to urgently address the identified vulnerabilities to safeguard the credibility of future elections.
