The Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) has raised concerns over website accessibility and technical anomalies affecting some political parties contesting the Osun State governorship election scheduled for Saturday, August 15.
The concerns were contained in a preliminary report from CITAD’s AI-based PAWSOM-Monitor, which was deployed to monitor digital rights, website accessibility, and possible data and privacy breaches involving political parties and their candidates ahead of the election.
According to the report, PAWSOM-Monitor conducted 31,763 checks on the websites of 15 political parties between August 8 and 9.
It said 25,287 of the checks were successful, while 6,476 failed for technical reasons, with the overall risk assessment rated moderate at 41 out of 100.
A further 21,644 checks were conducted on August 12, covering the same 15 political parties.
The preliminary assessment showed that 12 party websites were operational, while two were classified as “operational with anomalies”. The website of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM), however, was classified as unreachable from the monitoring server.
CITAD said the APM website recorded the most significant concern, with all three verification attempts returning an “ISP_block_detected” error and recording zero successful checks.
It, however, cautioned that the finding did not establish that the website had been deliberately blocked or censored.
“The finding only indicates that the website was unreachable from the monitoring vantage point and requires independent verification,” the report said.
The Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) website was also classified as “operational with anomalies” despite being accessible during all three final verification attempts, including an independent verification by CITAD monitors.
Similarly, the Action Democratic Party (ADP) website was accessible during all three final checks but recorded DNS differences during two attempts, prompting the platform to flag it for further technical review.
CITAD said the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and National Democratic Congress (NDC) had also joined the list of parties whose websites were operational with anomalies.
The organisation said the findings indicated instances of website unavailability, degraded performance and DNS anomalies during the monitoring period.
However, it stressed that the available evidence was insufficient to determine whether the conditions resulted from deliberate external interference, Internet Service Provider restrictions, hosting problems, domain or DNS configuration issues, or other technical factors.
“PAWSOM-Monitor therefore does not classify the observations as confirmed cases of censorship or deliberate digital-rights violations at this stage,” CITAD said.
It explained that its methodology requires human review and additional verification before any disruption can be attributed to an external actor.
CITAD recommended that affected parties, particularly APM, PRP and ADP, immediately conduct technical reviews of their websites and domain/DNS configurations to identify and rectify any underlying problems.
It also advised the parties to engage their hosting providers, domain registrars and Internet Service Providers where necessary, while subjecting the affected websites to independent verification before drawing conclusions about possible external interference.
CITAD said it would continue monitoring the digital environment and publish daily reports.
The organisation launched PAWSOM-Monitor last week as a pilot ahead of the Osun governorship election, with plans to deploy the platform during the 2027 general elections.
The initiative is designed to assess whether participating political parties and candidates enjoy equal digital access and fair opportunities, while tracking potential digital rights, data protection and privacy concerns before, during and after elections.
The report was signed by CITAD Executive Director, YZ Ya’u.
