A consortium of 5 civil society organisations has launched the Nigeria Election Data Observatory (NEDO), a joint election monitoring and data-sharing initiative designed to strengthen impartial verification of election outcomes, monitor electoral incidents and enhance public entry to credible info forward of the 2027 basic elections.
The consortium, comprising Dataphyte Foundation, YIAGA Africa, BudgIT Foundation, the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID), and Dean Initiative, mentioned it plans to deploy greater than 4,000 election observers via the networks of its member organisations for the 2027 polls.
The initiative will combine info gathered by election observers, information from official outcomes revealed by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), analysis findings, and media stories into a standard technological platform for evaluation, verification, and public communication.
Oluseyi Olufemi of Dataphyte Foundation, who learn the consortium’s assertion on the launch, mentioned the initiative was designed to deal with the fragmentation of election commentary actions amongst civil society organisations and set up a coordinated system for analyzing electoral info.
He defined that though civil society teams had invested appreciable assets in election commentary, voter schooling, incident monitoring, analysis and information evaluation through the years, a lot of the knowledge generated remained inside separate institutional networks and information methods.
According to him, this association has restricted the flexibility of organisations to mixture and evaluate proof, confirm stories throughout totally different sources and maximise the worth of their investments in election monitoring.
The consortium mentioned the expertise of the 2023 basic elections, notably the controversies surrounding INEC’s Result Viewing Portal (IReV) and the transmission and public show of election outcomes, bolstered the necessity for a coordinated, impartial civic info system.
It argued that an built-in platform would allow civil society organisations to check official election data with impartial observations from polling items and different areas, establish discrepancies that require additional investigation, and talk findings supported by verifiable proof.
A significant part of NEDO is the deployment of know-how to gather, course of and analyse outcomes revealed by INEC.
The consortium mentioned it could incorporate automated information assortment methods able to retrieving info obtainable from the electoral fee, alongside synthetic intelligence optical character recognition (OCR) know-how.
The OCR know-how converts photographs of election outcome sheets obtained from IReV into machine-readable information that may be organised, analysed and shared with collaborating organisations.
The consortium mentioned the system would help interactive election outcome platforms developed by its companions, together with Dataphyte Foundation and BudgIT Foundation, whereas making electoral info extra accessible for public scrutiny.
Through the association, info collected by one collaborating organisation can be made obtainable to different companions via utility programming interfaces (APIs) and different data-sharing mechanisms.
The coalition cited public confidence within the electoral course of as one more reason to ascertain the observatory.
It cited YIAGA Africa’s September 2026 National Voting Intention Survey, which reportedly discovered that solely 34 per cent of respondents expressed confidence in INEC’s potential to conduct credible elections.
The consortium mentioned the discovering highlighted the significance of impartial election commentary and entry to credible info all through the electoral cycle.
It additionally warned that the rising use of generative synthetic intelligence, deepfakes, manipulated content material, and misinformation had created extra challenges for the integrity of electoral info.
According to the coalition, residents more and more want dependable technique of distinguishing genuine election info from false or deceptive claims, notably in periods when political tensions and competing accounts of electoral occasions might affect public notion.
It mentioned NEDO would convey collectively impartial commentary networks, analysis establishments, information platforms and media organisations to enhance the gathering and verification of electoral proof.
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