The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) of Nigeria has addressed concerns over the security of the 2023 election results, assuring that the data remains intact and securely stored on Amazon Web Services (AWS). This clarification comes after MundX Analytics, a Nigerian elections data and analytics company, raised alarms about the expiration of the inecelectionresults.net domain, which was previously used to host polling-unit result sheets.
According to INEC's Director of Information and Communication Technology, Lawrence Bayode, the commission had migrated from the inecelectionresults.net domain to its current .ng platform, and the actual election results were stored separately on AWS. Bayode emphasized that the expired .net domain did not host INEC's election data, contrary to MundX's claims. He explained that some old links to result sheets were still pointing to the discontinued domain, causing the issue.
MundX Analytics had alleged that INEC allowed the domain used to deliver some 2023 polling-unit result sheets through the INEC Results Viewing Portal to expire, and it was acquired by a firm that redirects users to an advertising website. The company claimed that at least 470,619 result records pointed directly to the expired domain, making hundreds of thousands of result sheets inaccessible through their original IReV links.
INEC's ICT director, Lawrence Bayode, dismissed any suggestion that INEC's election data had been acquired by another person or organization, insisting that the results remained intact. He disclosed that the commission became aware of the issue while preparing its platform for the Osun State governorship election and directed its technical team to identify and fix the affected links.
Bayode further explained that INEC had used Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3) to store election results since the commission began deploying the IReV portal. He stressed that the .ng domain itself did not contain the election results, which are stored in an S3 bucket on AWS. This, he said, is where INEC stores all its results, including those from the 2023 elections.
MundX Analytics founder, Martin Uwakwe, clarified that the investigation did not find a database containing voters' personal information, biometric data, Permanent Voter Cards, or the voter register on the affected domain. The records involved, he said, were images or PDF copies of polling-unit result sheets previously published through IReV for public scrutiny.
Despite INEC's assurance that the underlying election data remains secure, concerns linger about the accessibility of result sheets through old links associated with the discontinued domain. The incident highlights the importance of effective data management and infrastructure security for Nigeria's electoral processes.
Key points
- INEC stores 2023 election results on Amazon Web Services (AWS).
- Expired domain inecelectionresults.net previously hosted links to polling-unit result sheets.
- INEC assures that election data remains secure and intact despite domain expiration concerns.
