By Mustapha Salisu
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.
This was contained in a statement signed by CITAD’s Executive Director, YZ Ya’u, on the organisation’s recommendations following its monitoring of the 2026 Osun State Governorship Election.
Ya’u made the recommendation through its PAWSOM-MONITOR initiative, which monitors privacy abuse, websites and social media platforms in Nigeria’s electoral environment.
The organisation urged political parties to promptly address technical, accessibility and security concerns that could undermine their ability to effectively communicate with voters.
It also called on parties to establish mechanisms for regular monitoring of their websites and official social media accounts to quickly detect outages, account restrictions, hacking attempts, impersonation, loss of access and other digital security challenges.
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According to Ya’u, political parties and candidates should ensure that their official social media accounts are clearly identifiable and adequately secured against account takeover, impersonation and other forms of digital abuse.
The organisation further stressed that political parties preparing for the 2027 general elections, including those not covered by the current monitoring exercise, should take their digital platforms seriously and proactively address emerging technical and security challenges.
Ya’u clarified that no confirmed incident of deliberate censorship, politically motivated website blocking or external interference was established by PAWSOM-MONITOR during the reporting period.
It explained that the automated findings generated by the monitoring system are signals requiring further investigation and do not, on their own, establish responsibility for any disruption.
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The organisation also disclosed plans to update PAWSOM-MONITOR within the coming weeks and deploy its full monitoring features ahead of the 2027 elections.
According to Ya’u, the expanded platform will monitor both websites and social media handles of political parties and candidates, while also tracking the use of voters’ personal data to determine possible violations of the Nigeria Data Protection Act in the context of elections.
Ya’u said it 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.