Elections Will Continue to Be a Challenge declared Former Chairman Jega

…says Database Is not Foolproof.
NEWSCOVER
Professor Attahiru Jega, immediate past Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has said that the Electoral Commission’s database was not foolproof and therefore, prone to sophisticated cyber hacks.
Jega disclosed this while speaking to Trust TV about his personal assessment of INEC’s preparedness for Saturday, February 25 Presidential and National Assembly elections.
and issues concerning electioneering in the country.
Speaking also on general issues concerning electioneering processes in Nigeria, the former elections chief umpire, recalled that he was the one that introduced the novel Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) which will be a useful tool for the 2023 general elections.
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 is also configured to automatically transmit the number of verified voters for each polling unit to the INEC database.
Confirming the fears of election monitors and analysts, the former INEC chairman who applauded the general efforts of the current INEC leadership for adopting BVAS, however, said he could not guarantee that the commission’s database couldn’t be hacked.
“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.
“But all over the world, databases are used and they are relatively safe to be used because people now deploy effective cyber-security systems.”
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.