Osun Election: CITAD Flags Website Anomalies, Urges Political Parties to Conduct Urgent Technical Reviews

The Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) has raised concerns over website accessibility and technical anomalies affecting some political parties ahead of the Osun State governorship election scheduled for Saturday, August 15, 2026.

The findings are contained in a preliminary report generated through PAWSOM-Monitor, an AI-based platform launched by CITAD to monitor digital rights, data and privacy issues associated with political parties and their candidates before, during and after elections.

Between August 8 and 9, PAWSOM-Monitor conducted 31,763 checks on the websites of 15 political parties contesting the election. Of these, 25,287 checks were successful, while 6,476 failed for technical reasons. The overall digital-risk assessment stood at 41/100, indicating a moderate level of risk.

A further 21,644 checks were conducted on August 12, with the latest assessment showing that 12 party websites were operational, two were operational with anomalies, while one the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) website was unreachable from the monitoring server.

CITAD said the APM website recorded zero successful checks in three verification attempts, with the system returning an “ISP_block_detected” error. However, the organisation stressed that the finding does not establish that the website was deliberately blocked or censored.

The Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) website was accessible during all three final checks but was classified as “Operational With Anomalies” and recommended for further technical review.

Similarly, the Action Democratic Party (ADP) website was accessible but recorded DNS differences during two checks. The All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and National Democratic Congress (NDC) websites were also flagged as operational with anomalies in the latest assessment.

CITAD said the findings indicate instances of website unavailability, degraded performance and DNS anomalies, but there is currently insufficient evidence to attribute them to deliberate interference, ISP restrictions, hosting problems, domain configuration issues or other technical factors.

The organisation therefore cautioned against immediately classifying the incidents as confirmed cases of censorship or digital-rights violations, noting that PAWSOM-Monitor requires human review and independent verification before assigning responsibility.

CITAD urged APM, PRP and ADP, in particular, to conduct immediate technical reviews and engage their hosting providers, domain registrars and ISPs where necessary.

The organisation said it would continue daily monitoring and reporting, with plans to deploy the platform more extensively during the 2027 general elections.

By Yunusa Zakari Ya’u, Executive Director