Immediate past Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Attahiru Jega, has said that the electoral Commission’s database was not foolproof.
Prof. Jega said this while speaking to Trust TV about INEC’s readiness for the Saturday, February 25’s Presidential and National Assembly elections and issues concerning electioneering in the country.
Recall that the INEC has introduced a novel tool, the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, for the 2023 general elections (BVAS).
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A BVAS is an electronic device that reads Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) and authenticates voters by using their fingerprints to prove that they are eligible to vote at a specific polling unit.
The device will also automatically transmit the number of verified voters for each polling unit to the INEC database.
Commenting on the effectiveness of BVAS, the former INEC chairman praised the electoral body’s level of preparedness, but said he couldn’t guarantee that the commission’s database couldn’t be hacked.
According to Prof. Jega, “You see, in this modern age, nobody can give you 100 per cent assurance that a database cannot be hacked, unless the database is not online.
“In 2015, when we did the elections, our database wasn’t online. But now, particularly because there’s the issue of electronic transmission of results, it has to be online.
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“But all over the world, databases are used and they are relatively safe to be used because people now deploy effective cyber-security systems.”
The Political Scientist also stated that INEC has confirmed that they have excellent cyber security for their databases.
He continued, “And INEC had said consistently, that knowing the political terrain, they have also got the best cyber security for the databases that they have. And we have to believe that they’ve done their best.
“It doesn’t mean it will be 100 per cent secure, but I know that whoever uses a database, also uses a security alternative which virtually nobody knows,” he said.
