Ekiti, Osun Elections: Our Portal Was Attacked – INEC

With governorship elections conducted in Ekiti and Osun States recently, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) said its result viewing portal was attacked by hackers from outside the shores of the country.

INEC chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, said the commission had recorded several other attempts to hack into the cyber security system of the result viewing portal.

Yakubu spoke in Abuja during the conference organised by a civil society organisation, YIAGA Africa, to launch the election result analysis dashboard (ERAD) report agenda.

Yakubu said: “Another technical concern for us is the repeated attempts to break through our cyber security system for the portal.

“Our engineers reported several cyber attacks on the portal during the Ekiti and Osun governorship elections, some of them from as far as Asia.

“I am glad to note that all of them failed.

“However, while we are confident in the security solutions that we have deployed for IReV (result viewing centre) and all our web presence, we must remain vigilant and continue to strengthen our defences.

“We have tasked our engineers to do everything possible to fully protect the IReV and all our web resources.”

The INEC boss also said the commission was working towards addressing other challenges faced by it, most of which are administrative.

He said: “For example, we found that some of the low-quality uploads that occurred in the field, which some of the observers have also noted, were due to the unavailability or substitution of presiding officers that were trained prior to the elections.

“We shall administratively deal with this challenge and ensure that only adequately trained presiding officers are deployed for elections.

“Also, more hands-on training may be required to ensure that all those involved throughout the value chain of the IReV are fully ready for what is bound to be a major outing during the 2023 general election.”