A Nigerian technology company, SoftSmart Enterprise Solutions, has unveiled a real-time result collation system designed to promote transparency and restore public confidence in the country’s electoral process.
The company’s Managing Director, Mr. Charles Musa, disclosed this at a news conference in Abuja on Friday, describing the innovation as a major breakthrough in Nigeria’s quest for credible and verifiable elections.
Musa said the system is powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technologies, enabling it to automatically capture and process election results from polling units as they are uploaded to the Independent National Electoral Commission’s (INEC) Result Viewing Portal (IReV).
According to him, the technology instantly extracts, validates, and uploads data from INEC Form EC8A — the official polling unit result sheet — to a central database, creating a live public scoreboard of election results.
“We can go to the IReV portal, scrape it, review results, and conduct what I call a digital ingestion into the database,” Musa explained.
“This makes it possible for everyone to view a live scorecard of the elections as results are collated. Our technology is introducing what I call visible collation.”
He said the application uses advanced AI to recognise and verify entries on each EC8A form within 30 seconds, achieving over 95 per cent accuracy.
Musa attributed the innovation to recent advances in AI and vision technology — particularly Google’s image recognition tools — which enable near-perfect data capture and validation.
He added that the system would allow citizens, political parties, and observers to track election results from polling units through wards and local government areas, thereby enhancing transparency and accountability.
“When you watch election night in America, you get projected winners as results come in,” he said.
“You don’t have to wait until the end to see the trend. Once voting patterns are consistent, you can project the percentage scores of candidates.”
Musa announced that the company would demonstrate the technology during the forthcoming Nov. 8 governorship election in Anambra State, where a live display will show real-time collation of uploaded results.
He noted that the innovation is designed to complement INEC’s existing systems, enhance efficiency, and strengthen public trust in electoral processes.
SoftSmart Enterprise Solutions is a Nigerian technology firm that specialises in AI-driven governance and electoral management systems.
