“We are very disappointed”. From Abuja, the capital of Nigeria, political analyst Teniola T. Tayo does not mince words. While ruling party candidate Bola Tinubu digs its lead and that the accusations of fraud multiply, the new bimodal voter accreditation system (BVAS), responsible for delays in the feedback of results, is singled out.
“There were a lot of expectations and hopes in this election, because of the innovations made to the electoral law to make the process more transparent, notes Cynthia Mbamalu, founder of the NGO from Nigerian civil society Yiaga Africa. But although it presents positives, the presidential election of 2023 represents once again a missed opportunity”.
Untenable promises
BVAS, a new state-of-the-art technology deployed for the first time on a large scale in Nigeria, uses biometrics to authenticate the identity of voters, and thus avoid “overvoting” by ghost citizens. He also promised to quickly transmit the results electronically. Its use should therefore, according to Inec, the independent authority responsible for electionsto increase the transparency and regularity of the ballot, while most of the elections held in Nigeria have been marred by accusations of fraud since the return to democracy in 1999.
But the promise was not kept: the first partial results were announced four days after the poll due to major failures in the electronic transfer of votes, and numerous irregularities were denounced.
“Some voters were deprived of their right to vote, due to failures or delays of the BVAS, which electoral agents also did not know how to use correctly, deplores Teniola T. Tayo. an overall assessment of the system, deprivations of voting rights were caused by these malfunctions, facial recognition for example struggled to differentiate between twins. Many here believe that it cost far too much for the result obtained.
240 million euros
The implementation of such technology, assessed by the Punch newspaper at 117 billion naira – approximately 240 million euros – represents indeed an additional expense for an election at an already pharaonic cost: Nigeria, the most populous country in Africa, has more than 90 million voters out of some 176,000 polling stations. The BVAS thus failed to convince all the parties of the transparency of the ballot.
Opposition parties denounced “a sham” election and demanded the cancellation of the vote. “We have totally lost faith in the whole process,” the People’s Democratic Party and Labor Party said at a joint press conference on Tuesday.
For its part, the Inec castigated accusations deemed “unfounded and irresponsible”. “When they are not satisfied with the result of an election”, the candidates “are free to address the courts”, but they cannot ask for its cancellation before its end, added the commission in a press release.
The BVAS system, however, was intended to limit the risk of tension by ensuring undeniable transparency in the ballot. But rather than appease the spirits, the logistical problems have stirred up a already tense social context. Nigeria is indeed going through a double shortage of currency and fuel, to which are added serious problems of insecurity in the four corners of the country.
“Technology only works when people make it work”
“I don’t know if the delay really increases the risk of changes to the results, wonders Enzo Fasquelle, a member of the NigeriaWatch program at the Research Institute for Development (IRD). But it increases the challenges, because more of a process is long, the more opaque it becomes. This is what concerns me: using advanced technology to increase transparency can ultimately lead to more opacity and more doubts. Biometrics is a growing market on the continent, but we see that it meets a need that does not necessarily correspond to reality.”
The problem is not specific to Nigeria, nor to the many African countries which have opted for this type of electoral technology since the beginning of the 2000s: in 2020, the former American president Donald Trump had denounced fraud during his loss to Joe Biden, in accusing a company of erasing three million electronic votes in its favor.
“Technology can be used as a tool to improve the electoral process, but it is not a miracle solution, and we cannot subcontract the construction of democracy to technology, concludes Cynthia Mbamalu. In this context, the The problem is a lack of proper testing and reviews for national rollout. Remember, technology only works when people make it work.”