The impending general election in Nigeria has been one to look out for, with Nigerians being immensely stern in holding political office aspirants more accountable this time around. Having strut through a cycle of bad leadership and recurrent depravations, most Nigerians have become more determined to focus on this 2023 general election, in a bid to elect in aspirants that would show overt accountability and massive development in the social, economic and political status quo.
With APC’s Bola Tinubu, Peter Obi and Abubakar Atiku of Labour Party and the People’s Democratic Party respectively being the top contenders for the incoming Presidential election, numerous Nigerians, especially the youths have geared towards political consciousness, so as to play an important role in deciding the future of the country. On this apathy being curbed towards this incoming election, the Independent National Electoral Commission in a report, noted that over 93 million Nigerians had been authenticated to practice in the voting exercise. On the accreditation of the election, INEC’s Chairman, Professor Mahmood Yakubu also indicated that the Biomodal Voters Accreditation would be implemented.
Electronic measure to be implemented by INEC for 2023 also susceptible.
As a result of the update for the electronic paradigm that is to be implemented for the upcoming election, numerous concerns have been raised as to the susceptibilities of the electronic paradigm. Donald Inwalomhe while raising this concern, noted that the electronic measures to be imbibed for the coming election was not without its vulnerabilities. He stated that the security vulnerabilities could also be exploited to upset the transmission of election results electronically. He pointed a note of warning to INEC to not underestimate the prowess of electronic hackers, so as not to make the similar mistake like the concluded Ekiti and Osun States.
Cyber-attack being a new school menace that has ravaged the electronic age, is an attempt geared towards disrupting a computer system or network. Evidently, there are a range of motives as to why perpetrators indulge in this menace such as to extort money from companies or other individuals or extracting poignant information from organizations. Also, these hackers indulge in this act to disrupt services and deteriorate government-controlled operations. Recently, there have been numerous attacks on government and non-government organizations and services globally.
Hackers to purposely target electronic transmission for 2023 election.
Donald noted that these electronic hackers would attempt to indulge in any means to infiltrate the electronic transmission related to the country’s impending 2023 general elections. The susceptibilities that attach itself to the electronic transmission of these election results would make hacking an immense possibility for the disruption of the general election. As such, political parties would be looking to employ this means to carry out electioneering malpractices and thus, the need for INEC to be very wary of this possibility.
In expounding on the problem of cyber security or cyber criminals getting into the election system which are immensely vulnerable, Donald offered the example of an energetic bear hack, where attackers placed malware on websites that is proposed for software updates for energy companies. The culprits infiltrated the energy grids and petroleum pipeline operators across the United States and across Europe, with operations going on for over three years. Donald however stated that all evidence pointed to the fact that the electronic transmission would be targeted by hackers towards the impending general election.
Hack of INEC website could lead to manipulation of election results.
Donald however appealed to the electioneering commission to ensure the utilization of exclusive and efficient networks and custom-built databases with needed updated security protocols, in a bid to ensure that the 2023 general election is not ravaged by hacking and for Nigerians to elect their preferred candidacies across every political spheres. Though accepting the inevitability of websites being vulnerable to hackers, he noted that INEC must do everything within its reach to secure its website, as hacking the sites could lead to manipulation of actual election results.
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