Former Vice President and presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, has expressed concern over the alleged use of an outdated operating system on the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), warning that it could expose Nigeria’s electoral process to cybersecurity and operational risks ahead of the 2027 general elections.
Atiku’s concerns were disclosed by his media aide, Paul Ibe, in a post on his Facebook page on Tuesday.
The former Vice President raised the alarm following reported failures during the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) mock accreditation exercise in Osun State on August 1, 2026, as well as comments attributed to the commission’s Director of Information and Communication Technology, Dr Lawrence Bayode.
Bayode, while speaking on Arise TV on Monday, reportedly said the BVAS, introduced into Nigeria’s electoral process in 2021, currently operates on Android version 10.
Reacting in a statement issued by his Media Office in Abuja on Tuesday, Atiku said Android 10 reached end-of-life status in 2023 and no longer receives regular security updates or patches.
He argued that running critical electoral technology such as the BVAS on an outdated operating system could expose the system to cybersecurity vulnerabilities and operational failures.
Atiku questioned why INEC, despite what he described as its substantial budget, had not upgraded the BVAS software ahead of the 2027 elections or used upcoming off-cycle polls, including the Osun governorship election, to test an updated version.
He described INEC’s handling of the BVAS issue as “suspicious”, alleging that the continued use of outdated technology could undermine the integrity and credibility of Nigeria’s elections.
According to him, vulnerabilities in an outdated operating system could potentially be exploited by cybercriminals to gain unauthorised access to BVAS devices and tamper with stored voter accreditation records or polling unit result data before transmission.
The ADC presidential candidate also raised concerns over the transmission of polling unit results through public telecommunications networks to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) portal.
He warned that outdated security and cryptographic components could increase the electoral system’s exposure to cyber threats, including attempts to intercept, block or manipulate data transmitted between polling units and the result-viewing platform.
Atiku further expressed concern about the biometric functions of the BVAS, which relies on fingerprint and facial recognition technologies for voter accreditation.
He said an outdated biometric framework could affect the accuracy and resilience of the system and potentially make it vulnerable to attempts to circumvent its verification processes.
The former Vice President also warned that software defects associated with legacy systems could trigger application crashes, particularly during periods of heavy usage, potentially causing delays in voter accreditation.
He said he supported calls by cybersecurity experts for an independent and comprehensive audit of the BVAS hardware and software ahead of the 2027 general elections.
Atiku maintained that running critical national infrastructure on an end-of-life operating system could expand the attack surface and expose Nigeria’s electoral system to avoidable cybersecurity and operational risks.
The statement was signed by the Atiku Media Office in Abuja on August 11, 2026.
