Yiaga Africa to use AI to scrutinize Osun governorship election results

Election observer group Yiaga Africa is deploying an artificial intelligence-assisted system to scrutinize results from the upcoming Osun State governorship election. The organization announced it will combine its Process and Results Verification for Transparency (PRVT) methodology with its Election Result Analysis Dashboard (ERAD 2.0) to assess both the electoral process and the integrity of the results.

Yiaga Africa's Executive Director, Samson Itodo, explained that the PRVT methodology is statistically based and allows for independent assessment of election-day processes and verification of official results against votes recorded at sampled polling units. The ERAD 2.0 platform, an AI-assisted and human-verified tool, audits results published on the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) Result Viewing Portal (IReV).

Itodo stated that the presence of results on IReV alone should not be considered proof of authenticity. He highlighted that certain validation processes between the polling unit and the final publication of results are not sufficiently visible to the public. This lack of transparency, he argued, necessitates an independent verification mechanism to compare polling unit records with the figures on the results portal.

"The more important question was what would happen if results uploaded to IReV had themselves been manipulated or falsified," Itodo said. "That is why we say that in this entire journey, these are not visible, and INEC is to make it visible. But that’s where the PRVT meeting comes in because it helps check some of the results that are here."

Yiaga Africa maintains that electronic publication does not inherently guarantee election integrity. The organization insists that results uploaded by INEC must be independently testable against observer records from polling units. Their PRVT system uses a representative sample of polling units to generate independent estimates for comparison with official results, ensuring a data-driven assessment.

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The more important question was what would happen if results uploaded to IReV had themselves been manipulated or falsified. That is why we say that in this entire journey, these are not visible, and INEC is to make it visible. But that’s where the PRVT meeting comes in because it helps check some of the results that are here.