The Executive Director of Yiaga Africa, Samson Itodo, in this interview with SEYE OLUMIDE, speaks on the need for clearer institutional boundaries and stronger collaboration between INEC and civil society organisations ahead of the 2027 general elections, while outlining safeguards to make election results more transparent, verifiable, and trusted by Nigerians.

How has technology expanded the capacity of election observers to monitor elections?
Technology has significantly expanded election observers’ capacity to monitor elections and analyse developments in real time. Through Yiaga Africa’s Watching The Vote initiative, trained citizen observers can transmit structured reports from polling units to a central database, enabling information from across the field to be received, verified and analysed rapidly.

Depending on the election, Yiaga Africa also deploys the Process and Results Verification for Transparency (PRVT) methodology. This places observers in a statistically representative sample of polling units and uses their reports to independently assess both the electoral process and INEC’s declared results.

Another important tool is the Election Results Analysis Dashboard (ERAD), which facilitates the analysis of polling-unit results uploaded to INEC’s IReV portal. It can be used to examine the completeness and consistency of published results, identify anomalies and provide independent public analysis.

These technologies, therefore, complement INEC by providing an additional layer of scrutiny. They do not, however, confer on civil society organisations the authority to declare election results. That responsibility remains with INEC.

How does the data-gathering and collation process of election observers differ from that of INEC?
The fundamental difference lies in mandate and methodology. INEC operates the official administrative and legal chain of the election, beginning at the polling unit and proceeding through the prescribed levels of collation until the final declaration.

Election observers do not administer or replace that chain. We gather independent evidence from polling units, collation centres and publicly available election information.

Under the PRVT methodology, for instance, Yiaga Africa does not simply aggregate reports from polling units where observers happen to be present. Observers are assigned to a scientifically selected, representative sample of polling units, and incoming reports undergo verification before being included in the analysis.

This approach can generate independent estimates of turnout, provide evidence of compliance with electoral procedures and, where the methodology permits, assess whether officially announced results fall within statistically established ranges.

Its greatest contribution is therefore the creation of a second line of accountability. Independent observation can validate official results where the evidence supports them, distinguish substantiated concerns from political allegations and identify serious inconsistencies requiring further explanation.

Has the growing role of civil society organisations in election monitoring strengthened or weakened public confidence?
Credible civil society observation has, on balance, strengthened public confidence in elections. This is particularly important in a politically polarised environment where political parties, candidates and social-media actors often present competing versions of what happened at polling units.

Independent observation provides an evidence-based account that can help citizens distinguish between genuine electoral problems and unsubstantiated allegations.

A credible observer may, for example, establish that significant operational failures occurred at particular locations without necessarily claiming that they affected the overall outcome. Conversely, where irregularities are sufficiently widespread or systematic, observers should be able to demonstrate the evidence and explain why those patterns raise legitimate questions about the integrity of the process or result.

Civil society can, however, undermine confidence when organisations abandon methodological discipline.

Premature conclusions, partisan conduct, unverified reports, and attempts to generalise from isolated incidents can damage both the electoral process and the credibility of election observation.

For that reason, independence, accuracy, methodological transparency and restraint must remain at the centre of credible election observation.

What are the major challenges associated with real-time election monitoring?
Real-time election monitoring comes with considerable operational challenges. Connectivity remains a major problem, particularly in communities where weak mobile networks can delay the transmission of reports, photographs and polling-unit results.

Access is another concern. Accredited observers may sometimes encounter restrictions at polling units or collation centres, while security threats can prevent observers from remaining at their assigned locations throughout voting, counting and results transmission.

Data quality is also a major consideration. Real-time systems must be capable of detecting transcription errors, incomplete submissions, duplicate reports and incorrect polling-unit information before such data influence analysis.

Security conditions add another layer of difficulty. Violence, intimidation, and political interference can disrupt observation and compromise observers’ ability to collect information safely and consistently.

Nigeria’s electoral geography presents an additional constraint. No civil society organisation can physically deploy observers to every polling unit simultaneously. This is why statistically representative sampling is particularly valuable when properly designed and implemented.

Which of the various monitoring technologies has proved most useful?
The different technologies serve different purposes and should not be treated as interchangeable.

Situation rooms are effective because they bring field reporting, verification, analysis and escalation into a coordinated command structure. They make it easier to determine whether an incident is isolated or part of a broader pattern.

PVT/PRVT methodologies are among the strongest tools for independent verification because they combine direct observation with statistical sampling. When rigorously implemented, they provide an independent evidentiary basis for assessing the credibility of an election and its outcome.

Mobile reporting platforms have significantly reduced the time required for observers to transmit structured information from polling units.

Results-analysis systems such as ERAD allow large volumes of polling-unit results published on IReV to be examined systematically rather than relying exclusively on figures emerging from collation centres.

Social media monitoring is also useful for early warning, incident detection, and identifying possible attempts at information manipulation. However, information circulating online cannot automatically be treated as evidence. It must be independently verified before being presented publicly as fact.

The broader lesson is that technology can make election observation faster, broader and more sophisticated, but it cannot replace sound methodology, properly trained observers or rigorous verification.

What safeguards are necessary to improve the credibility of election observation?
Election-observation organisations must also acknowledge weaknesses within the sector. Across the wider observation ecosystem, some organisations have relied too heavily on anecdotal evidence, issued conclusions prematurely, or failed to adequately explain how their methodologies and funding arrangements work.

The pressure to publish quickly can also undermine accuracy, particularly in an election environment driven by breaking news and social media. Speed should never take precedence over verification.

Safeguards should therefore include rigorous recruitment and training of observers; transparent sampling methods when statistical observation is used; multiple stages of data verification; secure technological infrastructure; clear audit trails for dataset amendments; and a separation between those collecting and validating data and those responsible for communicating findings publicly.

Organisations should also disclose their methodologies and maintain strong codes of conduct that protect political neutrality and independence.

Most importantly, observers must be willing to acknowledge the limits of available evidence. Where a claim cannot be independently verified, that should be stated clearly.

The credibility of election observation ultimately depends on whether the evidence supporting its conclusions can withstand scrutiny.

What should be the relationship between INEC and civil society organisations ahead of 2027?
Looking towards 2027, there should be a clearer understanding of institutional roles. INEC should regard credible observers as contributors to electoral transparency rather than competitors, while civil society organisations must continue to respect INEC’s constitutional responsibility to administer elections and declare official results.

INEC should improve accredited observers’ access to polling units and collation centres, provide clear and timely regulations for results management, increase transparency in the operation of electoral technologies, and ensure the timely publication of polling-unit results.

There should also be more structured engagement among INEC, civil society organisations, political parties, security agencies, the media and technology experts before election day, rather than attempting to resolve every major issue during the election itself.

That relationship must remain complementary without compromising the independence of civil society or its ability to hold INEC accountable.

Ultimately, the greatest protection for the integrity of election results remains transparency at the polling unit. Once votes have been counted and the polling-unit result has been signed, citizens, observers and political parties should be able to verify that result.

Making results transparent at their source significantly reduces the space for manipulation further down the collation chain.

What technological, legal and institutional safeguards are needed for the 2027 elections?
For 2027, Nigeria needs stronger technological, legal, institutional and operational safeguards working together as a single election-transparency ecosystem.

On the technological front, INEC should strengthen the resilience, capacity, cybersecurity and auditability of BVAS, IReV and other electoral infrastructure. Systems should have adequate redundancy in the event of network failures, clearly defined incident-management procedures, and transparent mechanisms for reporting and explaining disruptions.

Legally, existing provisions should be supported by detailed and unambiguous regulations that address electronic transmission, electronic publication of polling-unit results, and the relationship between digitally transmitted information and physical result forms.

Institutionally, INEC should establish stronger, more predictable mechanisms for engaging accredited observers, including clear channels for escalating verified incidents during elections.

Civil society organisations should similarly deepen investment in data science, cybersecurity, digital forensics, open-source intelligence and AI-assisted analysis, while ensuring that human verification remains indispensable. Observer recruitment, vetting, training, field security and communications redundancy should also be strengthened.

Greater cooperation around common data standards could allow credible organisations to compare evidence and findings without unnecessarily duplicating deployments.

Ultimately, the strength of independent election observation lies in preserving institutional separation.

INEC produces the official result. Political parties compete to win. The media informs the public. Civil society independently scrutinises the process.

If each performs its responsibility properly, these roles reinforce rather than weaken one another.

For 2027, therefore, the objective should go beyond producing election results quickly. Nigeria needs results that citizens can independently trace, examine and have sufficient reason to trust.