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Business News of Friday, 10 March 2023

Source: www.legit.ng

Tech-Savvy Nigerians, others build innovative sites to check 2023 polls, 11 million votes counted

The photo used to illustrate the stoty The photo used to illustrate the stoty

Nigerians have announced two websites to monitor Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC)’s Result Viewing portal (IReV) and begin collating the February 25, 2023, presidential election results and forthcoming governorship and house of Assembly elections.

The web applications were announced on Twitter. Tech-savvy individuals and media firms built the sites to recover missing or stolen votes and reduce the chance of such incidents in the future.

One of the sites, www.forensic.nigeria2.com, was built to collate and transcribe votes from polling units across Nigeria, and the owners say they have counted about 11 million votes so far.

According to them, they are soliciting help from Nigerians to upload photos taken from their mobile phones from polling units or INEC's portal to successfully and accurately count the February 25, 2023, presidential election results and the March 18 governorship election.

Forensic was built by five tech-inclined Nigerians led by Mark Essien, the founder of Hotels.ng.

Users said that votes counted on forensic.nigeria2.com could be used in court to determine the actual winner of the elections.

“We urgently need your help on https://forensic.nigeria2.com We have transcribed 40,000 polling units. We need to do another 40,000 today, so we have evidence to go to court,” Mark Essien said on Twitter.

Also, they have built sites that could recover and document deleted or destroyed data from INEC’s Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) before it is reconfigured for the March 18 governorship and state House of Assembly poll.

Another portal is ready for governorship elections

BusinessDay reports that Jiro Ejobe, the managing director of VIISAUS Technology Limited, stressed the interest shown by the tech industry in the 2023 general election and described it as Nigeria’s most tech-enabled, technologically advanced poll.

Ejobe said that people were excluded from questioning the process before and, for the first time, can interface with the process without speaking to individuals.

Another platform, www.electionwatchng.com, was built by Enough is Enough (EiE), a not-for-profit organisation, BudgIT, CJID, and Dataphyte, as parallel INEC IReV for the March 18 governorship election.

It allows Nigerians to upload signed copies of their polling unit result sheets to compare them to IReV uploads and be used to determine if the results announced were accurate and compliant with INEC’s regulations.

VIISAUS had collaborated with other firms to build ARVO, a platform that tracks incidents during the elections.

Ejobe said: “We have a program called Uncommon Sense that enlightens citizens about their rights, responsibilities, and duties as citizens. One of the key rights and responsibilities we emphasise is participation in the electoral process. The more the citizens participate, the less likely it is for votes, as you say, to get ‘stolen.”