E Don Kast is constructing a citizen-led election outcomes map

When the Unbiased Nationwide Electoral Fee (INEC), Nigeria’s electoral physique, launched the end result viewing portal (IReV) in 2020, the promise was real-time, clear end result collation. The portal was designed to permit residents to view copies of election outcomes recorded at polling items. 

But, throughout the 2023 presidential election, it took INEC 4 days to declare a winner.  Two months after the polls, solely 94.68% of polling-unit outcomes had been uploaded.

Outcomes moved from polling items to wards, then to native governments, states, and at last to the nationwide collation centre. In the meantime,  residents tried to piece collectively occasions from movies and screenshots circulating on social media. 

That interval between voting and the official declaration was marked by an overflow of unstructured info. Vote-counting movies and end result sheets circulated extensively on social media, fuelling on-line debate. 

E Don Kast, a citizen-led platform that allows voters to compile and add election outcomes from their polling items in actual time, needs to repair this downside.

Energy to the individuals

Inbuilt 2025 by Femi Olamijulo, founding father of Nexus Engineering and Planning Restricted, an city planning consultancy agency, E Don Kast is an election information platform the place outcomes are crowdsourced and transmitted in real-time by voters.

‘E Don Kast,’ derived from Nigerian Pidgin English, loosely interprets to ‘a secret that has gone public’ or ‘a cover-up that has been uncovered,’ which captures the essence of the platform. Customers can flag incidents and supply updates occurring from their polling items, such because the late arrival of an election officer.

Olamijulo’s concept for E Don Kast got here from his lived expertise in the USA, the place election outcomes are transmitted publicly in actual time. 

In Nigeria, he argued, that degree of visibility exists solely at polling items and declines as outcomes transfer up the collation chain. The 2023 normal elections strengthened that perception. 

“Even when a winner is just not declared that [election] night time, we will inform who’s probably going to win the election, given all the outcomes gathered to date,” Olamijulo stated.

E Don Kast works as an internet utility that requires no sign-in to add election outcomes. Anybody current at a polling unit can add a photograph of Kind EC8A–the official end result sheet–and enter the recorded figures. 

As soon as outcomes are uploaded, entries are grouped by polling items, which permits the platform to check a number of submissions.

“We evaluate submissions from the identical location and present the place reviews align,” Olamijulo stated. 

If a number of customers submit matching outcomes, Olamijulo stated the system assigns the next confidence rating and shows the figures; in any other case, the system withholds publication till further entries make clear the sample. He defined that information uploaded on the platform can’t be altered to stop abuse. 

E Don Kast additionally visualises information with maps. It has mapped greater than 8,000 wards and 176,000 polling items throughout Nigeria, enabling uploaded outcomes to seem on an interactive map slightly than as rows of numbers, in line with Olamijulo.

These geographical boundaries, he argued, make it simpler to evaluate patterns and evaluate neighbouring items. As customers see which polling items have submitted outcomes, patterns start to emerge, providing an early image of ward-level outcomes earlier than official collation reaches that stage.

‘We aren’t INEC’

Though E Don Kast seeks to construction what residents already doc, it operates within the territory INEC has tried to digitise by IReV. 

The IReV portal was designed to host photographed copies of Kind EC8A for public viewing, lowering reliance on televised bulletins.

Nevertheless, uploads to IReV had been uneven throughout the 2023 normal elections. Some outcomes had been delayed, pictures had been blurry or incomplete, and political events and residents continued circulating their very own tallies on social media. 

E Don Kast operates in that very same area, however differs in its reliance on a number of citizen uploads and geographical visualisation slightly than a single official submission. 

No matter these distinctions, a pure query is why E Don Kast was not constructed inside INEC’s framework. Olamijulo stated makes an attempt to have interaction public establishments revealed structural bottlenecks.

“One factor that I’ve seen firsthand is the dearth of political will,” he stated. He believes independence is critical for the platform’s credibility. “There’s already a longtime mistrust of the electoral course of,” he added. 

Embedding E Don Kast inside the electoral physique may blur its objective, he famous, including that the platform is healthier off as a citizen layer that enhances however is unbiased of the fee.

E Don Kast’s ambition is to not override Nigeria’s electoral physique. 

“We aren’t INEC,” Olamijulo stated. “We’re a citizen platform for individuals to do prompt collation.” 

The platform is structuring its operation round current voter behaviour, together with posting outcomes, election updates and vote-counting movies on social media.

The street to 2027

E Don Kast faces the inherent dangers of working a crowdsourced platform—chief amongst them, manipulation, significantly in Nigeria’s politically delicate atmosphere. As a result of submissions are nameless, the system may change into a goal of coordinated abuse. Olamijulo acknowledged the vulnerability, however stated the platform depends on three scoring layers as safeguards.

The primary layer is a high quality rating that assesses picture readability and verifies whether or not the add matches a recognisable EC8A type. The second is an anti-abuse rating designed to detect duplicate pictures and coordinated submissions. The third is a consensus rating that measures alignment throughout unbiased submissions from the identical polling unit. 

Olamijulo stated the platform doesn’t conceal discrepancies. The place submissions differ, the variation stays seen.

E Don Kast debuted on February 21 throughout by-elections within the Federal Capital Territory, Kano, and Rivers State, a rollout the group described as a stress take a look at. 

Olamijulo stated the subsequent proving floor would be the governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun states. Every election serves as a chance to strengthen the platform’s infrastructure and observe how residents interact with a structured various to social media.

The last word milestone, he stated, is the 2027 normal elections: “That’s our full deployment. We’re constructing 12 to 18 months forward.” 

E Don Kast is betting {that a} structured, clear strategy to end result collation can outperform the fragmented stream of figures throughout social media feeds. The 2027 normal elections can be its defining take a look at.