The Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) has called on political parties and candidates to strengthen the availability, security, and reliability of their official websites and social media platforms ahead of the 2027 general elections.
CITAD made the call in a statement signed by its Executive Director, YZ Ya’u, following the organization’s monitoring of the 2026 Osun State Governorship Election through its Privacy Abuse, Websites and Social Media Monitor (PAWSOM-MONITOR) initiative.
Ya’u urged political parties and candidates to promptly address technical, accessibility, and security challenges that could undermine their ability to communicate effectively with voters.
He also called on parties to establish mechanisms for regularly monitoring their websites and official social media accounts to quickly detect outages, account restrictions, hacking attempts, impersonation, loss of access, and other digital security threats.
According to him, political parties and candidates should ensure that their official social media accounts are clearly identifiable and adequately protected against account takeover, impersonation, and other forms of digital abuse.
He urged all political parties preparing for the 2027 elections, including those not covered by the current monitoring exercise, to take their digital platforms seriously and proactively address emerging technical and security challenges.
Ya’u, however, clarified that PAWSOM-MONITOR did not establish any confirmed incident of deliberate censorship, politically motivated website blocking, or external interference during the reporting period.
He explained that automated findings generated by the monitoring system should be regarded as signals requiring further investigation and do not, on their own, establish responsibility for any disruption.
The CITAD executive director disclosed that the organization plans to update PAWSOM-MONITOR in the coming weeks and deploy its full monitoring features ahead of the 2027 general elections.
He said the expanded platform would monitor both websites and social media accounts of political parties and candidates while also tracking the use of voters’ personal data to identify possible violations of the Nigeria Data Protection Act in the electoral context.
Ya’u said CITAD would continue monitoring Nigeria’s digital electoral environment, with particular attention to website availability, possible access disruptions, DNS anomalies, and other digital rights concerns capable of affecting the meaningful participation of political parties, candidates, and citizens in the electoral process.