“Atiku Raises Alarm Over BVAS Running On Outdated Android 10” — Calls For Independent Audit Ahead Of 2027 Elections

Presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, has raised concerns over the operating system currently used on the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), warning that its continued deployment could expose Nigeria’s electoral process to cyber-security and operational risks ahead of the 2027 general elections.
Atiku’s concerns followed reported challenges during the August 1 mock accreditation exercise in Osun State and comments attributed to the Independent National Electoral Commission’s Director of Information and Communication Technology, Lawrence Bayode, that BVAS devices currently operate on Android version 10.
In a statement issued by his media office on Tuesday, the former Vice-President said Android 10 had reached its end-of-life status in 2023 and no longer receives regular security updates and patches.
He questioned why INEC had not upgraded the operating system despite what he described as the Commission’s substantial budget and the importance of BVAS to the credibility of elections.
Atiku argued that any upgraded version ought to have been deployed and tested during off-cycle elections before the 2027 general election.
“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.
According to Atiku, running election technology on an operating system that no longer receives security support could create vulnerabilities capable of being exploited by malicious actors.
He warned that such vulnerabilities could potentially expose cached voter accreditation records and polling-unit result files stored on BVAS devices before their transmission to INEC’s systems.
The former Vice-President also expressed concern over the transmission of polling-unit results to the INEC Result Viewing portal through public telecommunications networks.
He argued that inadequate or outdated security protections could increase the risk of interception, unauthorised access or attempted manipulation during the transmission process.
Atiku further raised questions about the biometric components of BVAS, particularly fingerprint and facial recognition functions, warning that outdated software could contribute to technical failures or affect the reliability of authentication during periods of heavy electoral activity.
Describing BVAS as critical national election infrastructure, he said the security architecture surrounding the devices should be subjected to rigorous scrutiny before they are deployed nationwide.
“Running critical national infrastructure on an end-of-life operating system creates a broad attack surface,” Atiku said.
He consequently called for an independent and comprehensive audit of the BVAS devices, covering their hardware, software, source code and overall security architecture.
“To safeguard election integrity, it is vital to perform an independent, comprehensive code and hardware audit of the BVAS devices,” he stated.
Atiku maintained that addressing the concerns ahead of the 2027 elections would help strengthen public confidence in the electoral process and reduce the possibility of technical or cyber-security vulnerabilities affecting voter accreditation and result transmission.
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