Watch Nigeria Elections has declared its deployment during the Ekiti State Governorship Election a success, announcing that its election monitoring platform recorded zero system failure while covering all 2,284 polling units across the state.
Project Director of the organisation, Kerry Kenu, who spoke with journalists from the field after the exercise, said the technology-driven platform delivered seamless real-time election monitoring throughout the poll, maintaining an impressive 99.98 per cent uptime.
“We are live. Every polling unit. Zero downtime. The app performed at 99.98% uptime throughout the election. What we built works — and Nigerians deserve to know it,” Kenu said.
According to him, the platform enabled accredited agents deployed across Ekiti’s 16 Local Government Areas to transmit polling unit result sheets, livestream activities, submit incident reports and send SOS alerts in real time through an end-to-end encrypted infrastructure designed to operate effectively even in areas with weak internet connectivity.
He disclosed that the deployment successfully covered all 2,284 polling units in the state without any critical system failure, while its offline-first architecture ensured uninterrupted data collection in low-network locations.
Also speaking, the Co-Founder of Watch Nigeria Elections, Dr. Sani Adamu, described the successful deployment as a major step toward strengthening electoral transparency and democratic accountability in Nigeria through technology.
“Today is not just a technical milestone—it is a democratic one. When we conceived this platform, we asked ourselves a simple question: what would it take for every Nigerian, regardless of where they live, to witness their own election in real time? Today, Ekiti has answered that question. The answer is Watch Nigeria Elections,” Adamu said.
He explained that the platform was deliberately designed for ease of use by election agents operating in rural and underserved communities using affordable smartphones.
“We did not build this for Lagos. We built it for the polling unit in the bush, in the village square, in the ward where nobody is watching. That is where democracy is most vulnerable—and that is exactly where we show up,” he added.
On the legal framework guiding the organisation’s activities, the Legal and Publicity Secretary of Watch Nigeria Elections, Ndife Zion Walter, maintained that every aspect of the deployment complied with Nigerian electoral laws and the guidelines of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
“Every agent deployed today signed a non-partisan declaration. Every result sheet uploaded carries a timestamp, a GPS coordinate and an agent identity. This is not just monitoring—it is an evidence trail,” Walter stated.
She stressed that the organisation welcomed public scrutiny, insisting that all information gathered during the election was lawfully obtained and independently verifiable.
“We welcome scrutiny. We invite it because we have nothing to hide. Every piece of data collected today is legally admissible, ethically gathered and publicly verifiable. That is what accountability looks like,” he said.
Walter further disclosed that the organisation’s legal team was prepared to support any post-election review by making available independently gathered election data to complement official figures where necessary.
“If there are disputes, we have the receipts. Timestamps, images, GPS coordinates, video—all from the field. We stand ready to cooperate with any legitimate inquiry,” he added.
Buoyed by what it described as a successful outing in Ekiti, Watch Nigeria Elections announced plans to expand its operations to the forthcoming Osun State Governorship Election, revealing that recruitment of election agents for the exercise had already commenced.
The organisation also unveiled plans for a nationwide deployment ahead of the 2027 General Elections, targeting all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory for the presidential, National Assembly and other elections.
It added that the platform includes: Artificial Intelligence-powered result verification, improved offline synchronisation capabilities and multilingual support for election agents.
Expressing optimism about the future of election monitoring in the country, Kenu said the organisation remained committed to promoting transparency and public confidence in Nigeria’s electoral process.
“The era of election results being announced in the dark is over. We are building the infrastructure of electoral transparency, brick by brick, polling unit by polling unit. Ekiti is just the beginning,” he said.
