The Centre for Information Technology and Development (CITAD) has raised concerns over website accessibility and technical anomalies affecting some political parties contesting the August 15, 2026, Osun State governorship election.
The organisation disclosed this in a preliminary report on digital access, political parties’ website availability, and data and privacy breaches, based on monitoring conducted through its AI-powered PAWSOM-Monitor platform.
The report, signed by CITAD Executive Director, Y. Z. Ya’u, presents the findings of the monitoring exercise ahead of the Osun State governorship election.
CITAD said the platform was launched last week as a pilot initiative to monitor digital rights, data and privacy issues ahead of the election and assess whether participating political parties and candidates have equal opportunities to use digital platforms.
According to the report, PAWSOM-Monitor conducted 31,763 checks on the websites of 15 political parties between August 8 and 9, with 25,287 checks recorded as successful and 6,476 classified as failed for technical reasons.
The organisation said a further 21,644 checks were conducted based on data scraped and analysed on August 12, with the overall digital access risk assessed as moderate at 41 out of 100.
CITAD said 12 of the monitored political party websites were confirmed to be operational during the final verification exercise, while two were classified as operational with anomalies.
The website of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM) was, however, classified as unreachable from the monitoring server.
The report identified the APM website as the most significant concern, saying all three verification attempts conducted by PAWSOM-Monitor returned an “ISP_block_detected” error, with no successful connection recorded.
CITAD, however, cautioned that the finding does not establish that the website was deliberately blocked or censored, stressing that it only indicates that the website was unreachable from the monitoring point and requires independent verification.
The Peoples Redemption Party (PRP) website was also identified as having anomalies. Although the website was accessible during all three final verification attempts and was independently accessed by CITAD monitors, it was classified as “Operational With Anomalies” and recommended for further technical review.
Similarly, the Action Democratic Party (ADP) website was accessible during all three final checks but recorded DNS differences during two attempts, leading to its classification as “Operational With Anomalies.”
The report further identified the All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA) and the National Democratic Congress (NDC) as two additional political parties whose websites had moved into the “Operational With Anomalies” category.
CITAD said the preliminary findings showed instances of website unavailability, degraded performance and DNS anomalies during the monitoring period.
It stressed, however, that the available evidence was insufficient to establish whether the conditions were caused by deliberate external interference, Internet Service Provider restrictions, hosting challenges, domain configuration problems or other technical factors.
The organisation therefore said PAWSOM-Monitor would not classify the observations as confirmed cases of censorship or deliberate digital-rights violations without further human review and independent verification.
CITAD recommended that the affected political parties, particularly APM, PRP and ADP, immediately conduct technical reviews of their websites and domain or DNS configurations.
It also urged the parties to engage their hosting providers, domain registrars and Internet Service Providers where necessary to investigate the reported accessibility and DNS anomalies.
The organisation said the affected websites should undergo independent verification before any conclusion is reached regarding possible external interference.
CITAD said the Osun monitoring exercise would serve as a pilot ahead of plans to deploy PAWSOM-Monitor during the 2027 general elections, adding that monitoring and reporting would continue on a daily basis.