Towards a More Trustworthy Electoral Architecture for National Elections in Nigeria: The Presidential Election Results Collation Case Study

Nigeria's presidential results still depend on repeated manual collation. This article maps the failure points and proposes a new architecture: BVAS as the capture device, mandatory e-transmission, and a public electronic register for collation.

Watch · 1 ballot · 6 stops

A single ballot's journey, today.

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Stage 0 / 6

The Journey of a Single Ballot

From polling unit
to national declaration

As it works today

The Paper Trail

A ballot paper passes through at least six pairs of hands — and four manual collation stages — before a winner is declared.

Polling Unit Vote EC8A

Voter · Presiding Officer · Party Agents

A ballot is cast and counted by hand at one of ~177,000 polling units. Results are written onto the EC8A form in front of agents.

BVAS Capture Image only

Bimodal Voter Accreditation System

The presiding officer photographs the completed EC8A and uploads it to iReV. Only the image is captured — not the figures.

Risk · Pre-upload tampering Results may be altered at the polling unit before the photo is taken. Once captured, the image is fixed — but no machine reads the numbers.

iReV Public View Viewing portal

INEC Result Viewing Portal

Citizens can see scanned EC8A images. iReV is a viewer only — it is not consulted in collation.

Risk · Detached from collation The numbers the public sees on iReV are never the numbers used to declare a winner. There is no automatic enforcement.

Manual Collation & Entry of Results

Ward Collation EC8B

Ward Collation Officer · 8,809 wards

All EC8A forms in a ward are summed by hand into a single EC8B. Paper forms travel physically to the ward centre.

Risk · In-transit substitution Figures can be tampered with — added to one party, taken from another, or rewritten en route to the next stage.

LGA Collation EC8C

Local Government Collation Officer · 774 LGAs

EC8B forms from every ward are again added by hand into an EC8C at the local government area.

State Collation EC8D

State Collation Officer · 36 states + FCT

A third manual sum produces the EC8D — one per state. By now the figures have been re-entered three times.

National Collation EC8DA

Chief Returning Officer · Abuja

The 37 EC8Ds are added once more, and the final EC8E is published. A winner is declared.

Risk · Compounded error Each manual addition introduces room for arithmetic error or political pressure. The final number cannot be re-derived from the BVAS images alone.

A possible future

The Electronic Register

If BVAS captured the figures — not just the image — every result could flow straight into a public, real-time National Electronic Register.

Polling Unit Vote EC8A

Voter · Presiding Officer · Party Agents

No change here — the ballot is cast and counted at the polling unit, with party agents present and the EC8A signed.

BVAS Captures Figures Image + Data

Presiding Officer · Party agents witness

In addition to the EC8A photograph, party-vote totals are typed into BVAS at the polling unit, in front of agents, and signed digitally.

Opportunity Numbers are recorded at source — before any movement, transit, or rewriting can occur.

Auto-Transmit to NERER Real-time

Encrypted upload · BVAS → NERER

Both image and figures stream directly into the National Electronic Register of Election Results. No paper, no transit, no re-entry.

Opportunity The four manual collation stages — Ward, LGA, State, National — collapse into one cryptographically signed event per polling unit.

National Electronic Register NERER

Public, queryable, time-stamped

A single source of truth. Reports are auto-generated for ward, LGA, state, and national levels — all reconciled against BVAS images.

Opportunity Open to every Nigerian. Anyone can verify a polling unit's result against its own EC8A image, in real time.

Live Public Dashboard Open access

Citizens · Press · Observers · Parties

Results visible as they arrive, with anomalies flagged automatically (mismatches between BVAS figures and EC8A image).

Opportunity Disputes can be raised against specific polling units within minutes — not weeks of paper recounts.

Declaration EC8E

Chief Returning Officer · Abuja

The final declaration is the same number every Nigerian has been watching add up — not a new figure produced behind closed doors.

Opportunity Trust is earned in real time, by every citizen, not granted at the end by a single announcement.

The picture INEC takes of a result, and the number INEC announces from that result, are not yet the same thing. They could be.

The Scale of the Hand-Off

2023 presidential cycle
publicly reported figures

Polling units

Each one produces a single EC8A form that begins the journey.

Wards

First manual aggregation. Where physical paper begins to travel.

LGAs

Second manual sum. Forms from every ward are added by hand.

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Manual re-entries

A ballot is summed into a new form four times before declaration.

What Changes, At a Glance

Side-by-side comparison
of the two models

Dimension	Today · Paper Trail	Tomorrow · Electronic Register
Source of truth	Hand-written EC8A; images on iReV are advisory only.	Typed BVAS figures + EC8A image, cryptographically paired.
Manual collation stages	Four (Ward → LGA → State → National).	Zero. Reports are generated from the register on demand.
Time to first national figure	Days — sometimes weeks of paper transit.	Minutes after polls close, growing in real time.
Public visibility	Scanned images on iReV; no totals published.	Open dashboard; anyone can audit any polling unit.
Disputes	Filed after declaration; resolved through tribunal recounts.	Flagged at the polling-unit level within hours of upload.
Failure mode	Tampering during transit, arithmetic error at four levels.	Connectivity gaps — mitigated by offline queue and signed sync.