Plans & Pricing

VeryTally is a real-time election collation platform. Party agents and accredited observers at polling units submit results, accreditation figures, photo evidence and incident reports from their phones; coordinators at ward, local government, state and national levels watch the numbers come in live.

Who uses it

• Political parties — run a parallel tabulation: every polling-unit agent submits the signed result sheet the moment counting ends, and the national dashboard aggregates it in real time.
• Election observers — domestic and international missions follow collation progress and incidents from one screen.
• Media houses — track reporting coverage and results as they arrive, clearly labelled unofficial until INEC declares.
• Researchers — structured, timestamped polling-unit data for post-election analysis.

How it works

• One account per role, each inviting exactly the level below — national → state → local government → ward → polling-unit agent.
• Agents confirm presence at their unit, enter accreditation figures, then submit votes with a photo of the result sheet.
• Flagged sheets (disputed figures, over-voting) stay visible in every total — nothing is silently dropped.
• Open incidents block result submission until cleared, and escalations never go to INEC automatically.

Only INEC can declare official results. Everything on VeryTally is unofficial, agent-reported data.

For Researchers

VeryTally produces structured, timestamped, polling-unit-level election data — the kind that is hardest to obtain and most valuable for studying how elections actually run.

What the dataset contains

• PU-level results — votes per candidate for every reporting polling unit, with state, LGA and ward attached.
• Accreditation figures — accredited voter counts entered at the close of accreditation, before results.
• Discrepancy flags — every flagged sheet with its reason (over-vote, disputed figures), kept visible in all totals.
• Incident reports — timestamped incident records from the field, by category and location.
• The collation chain — how figures aggregate from polling unit → ward → LGA → state → national.

Methodology

• Figures are submitted by accredited agents from signed result sheets, with a photo of the sheet as evidence.
• Accreditation counts are entered when accreditation closes, before any voting figures.
• Flags are computed from the data (e.g. votes exceeding accredited voters) and disputed sheets carry their reason; nothing is silently dropped from any total.
• All data is unofficial — it reflects agent-reported field data. Only INEC declares official election results.

Access

Each deployment's dataset belongs to the party or organisation that ran it. Researchers should request data access through the deploying organisation, which can provide an anonymized export: per-PU results, incidents and a methodology note in one download, with all agent identities removed.

If you publish with VeryTally data, cite the deploying organisation and note the data as unofficial, agent-reported field data.

How Nigerian elections work

The cycle

• General elections hold every four years — presidential, National Assembly, governorship and state assembly polls.
• The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) fixes the timetable, registers voters and conducts the polls.

On election day

• Voters are accredited with the BVAS device, which verifies the Permanent Voter's Card (PVC) and captures biometrics.
• Voting happens at the polling unit — the smallest electoral unit. Nigeria has over 176,000 of them.
• After counting, the presiding officer records the votes on the result sheet and pastes a copy at the unit.

The collation chain

• Results move upward: polling unit → ward → local government → state → national collation centre in Abuja.
• At each level, figures are summed and announced before moving up.
• INEC's returning officers declare the official winners; only INEC's declaration is legally binding.

VeryTally mirrors this chain digitally: agents report at the polling unit, and every level above watches its own slice aggregate live.

INEC chairmen — past and present

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was established in 1998 to conduct Nigeria's elections. Its chairmen since then:

Chairman	Tenure	Note
Prof. Joash Amupitan	2025 – present	Professor of Law and Senior Advocate of Nigeria; appointed October 2025 to conduct the 2027 general elections.
Prof. Mahmood Yakubu	2015 – 2025	Oversaw the 2019 and 2023 general elections.
Prof. Attahiru Jega	2010 – 2015	Introduced the Permanent Voter's Card and Smart Card Reader; oversaw the 2011 and 2015 elections.
Prof. Maurice Iwu	2005 – 2010	Oversaw the 2007 general elections.
Dr. Abel Guobadia	2000 – 2005	Oversaw the 2003 general elections.
Justice Ephraim Akpata	1998 – 2000	Founding INEC chairman; oversaw the 1999 transition elections that ushered in the Fourth Republic.

Bodies that support the elections

The umpire

• INEC — registers voters, conducts polls, collates and declares official results. Its word on results is final by law.

Security

• Nigeria Police Force — lead agency for election security, deployed at polling units and collation centres.
• NSCDC (Civil Defence) — supports protection of electoral materials and personnel.

Polling staff

• NYSC members — serve as presiding officers and assistant presiding officers at polling units nationwide.

Observers

• Domestic: YIAGA Africa, the Nigeria Civil Society Situation Room, Transition Monitoring Group (TMG) and others deploy thousands of observers.
• International: the European Union, African Union, ECOWAS, NDI and IRI observe and publish findings.

The public

• The media — report results and keep the process in public view.
• Civil society & voters — the ultimate stakeholders; credible elections depend on their participation and vigilance.