By Gabriel Ewepu
ABUJA — The Because Of Our Tomorrow, BOOT Party, has urged the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to address glitches in its Candidate Nomination Portal to prevent political parties from being subjected to unnecessary agitations.
The party’s call followed an alarm raised by the National Democratic Party, NDC, over alleged discrepancies in the names of its candidates uploaded on the INEC portal.
Speaking with Vanguard, National Chairman of the BOOT Party, Sonny Adenuga, said his party also experienced difficulties while uploading the names of its candidates for the presidential and National Assembly elections.
Adenuga said although the party eventually succeeded in uploading its candidates, the process was unnecessarily difficult due to technical limitations and system vulnerabilities.
He said the experience exposed shortcomings that should be addressed before the 2027 general elections.
According to him, “The BOOT Party’s experience with the INEC Candidate Nomination Portal highlights both the promise and the shortcomings of electoral technology in Nigeria.
“While we ultimately succeeded in uploading our candidates for the Presidential and National Assembly elections, the process was unnecessarily difficult due to technical limitations and system vulnerabilities that turned what should have been a straightforward administrative exercise into a time-consuming and exhausting ordeal.
“Our experience points to several practical lessons for the deployment of electoral technology before, during, and after the 2027 general elections.”
Adenuga called for a redesign of the candidate nomination process, proposing that political parties should upload details of their duly nominated candidates directly to the portal, while INEC should validate the submissions against records from monitored and certified party primaries.
On reports of strange names replacing some candidates’ names on the portal, Adenuga said the party was still verifying the situation.
He, however, confirmed that the name of the party’s deputy governorship candidate in Rivers State, which was not initially published, had been uploaded.
“We are yet to confirm all. Rivers State deputy governor candidate name was not published earlier, but I learned it has been published this afternoon,” he said.
Adenuga said the party was optimistic of making significant gains in the 2027 elections, adding that it had strategies in place to win at least five elective positions.
He urged INEC to review the portal’s design, particularly the inability of political parties to view or compare candidate information already held by the commission while entering data.
According to him, minor differences in spelling, name sequencing or formatting can result in data mismatches.
He said such mismatches had occurred consistently since the 2023 general elections, creating avoidable administrative challenges for political parties.
“More concerning is the requirement for parties to first submit candidates’ information to INEC through personnel’s personal WhatsApp accounts before manually entering the same information into the Candidate Nomination Portal.
“Beyond the inefficiency of this duplication, the practice raises legitimate data protection and information security concerns that require urgent review,” he said.
Adenuga said Nigeria’s diverse naming conventions made it necessary for INEC to develop systems capable of accommodating legitimate variations in names rather than treating such differences as errors requiring repeated manual corrections.
He said the current arrangement placed an unnecessary administrative burden on political parties and turned what should be a straightforward nomination exercise into a lengthy process of resolving avoidable inconsistencies.
The BOOT Party chairman, however, acknowledged INEC’s constitutional role and its efforts to strengthen the country’s electoral process.
“Our recommendations are offered in the spirit of constructive engagement and institutional improvement.
“We are confident that, through sustained investment in resilient digital infrastructure, improved process design, and continuous engagement with political parties, INEC can build a more efficient, transparent, and trusted electoral system for the 2027 general elections,” he stated.
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