Atiku Abubakar, presidential candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), has raised concerns over the use of what he described as an outdated operating system on the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), warning that it could expose the 2027 elections to cyber and operational risks.
Atiku’s concerns followed reported failures during the August 1 mock accreditation exercise in Osun State and comments by Lawrence Bayode, the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) Director of ICT, that BVAS currently runs on Android version 10.
In a statement issued by his media office on Tuesday, the former vice-president said Android 10 reached its end-of-life status in 2023 and no longer receives security updates or patches.
Atiku questioned why INEC, despite its substantial budget, had not upgraded the BVAS software ahead of the 2027 general election or tested an updated version during off-cycle elections.
“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.
