A flagship initiative of Nigeria Youth Policy Development Advocacy (NYPD-Advocacy)

Watch · Report · Protect

YEGOYouth Electoral Guards
Data protection

Personal data is handled with the same discipline as electoral data

Observers are asked to hand over identity documents, contact details and location. That is a serious thing to ask of a volunteer, and it carries obligations YEGO states plainly.

1. Status of this statement

Framework, not yet an approved policyThis statement has not yet been reviewed against the Nigeria Data Protection Act by YEGO's legal advisers. It must not be relied on as a statement of compliance, and should be treated as a draft until YEGO adopts it formally.

Where this statement describes an intention rather than current practice, it says so.

2. What is collected

Applicant and guard records

  • Name, contact details (email, telephone) and date of birth
  • State, LGA and ward of residence
  • Identity information submitted for verification (NIN), stored encrypted and shown masked
  • Training progress, assessment scores and certification records

Deployment records

  • Polling unit assignments, dates of deployment, and the coordinating officer

Reports and evidence

  • Incident reports and early warnings, including location, time and content
  • Evidence attached to a report, which may incidentally identify people present

Enquiries and donations

  • Messages sent through the contact form, and the reply history
  • Donation records: name, contact, amount, method and receipt number

Platform and audit records

  • Who signed in, accessed, verified, escalated or changed a record, and when

3. Why, and on what basis

  • Verification: to confirm that an applicant is who they say they are and is based where they say they are.
  • Training and certification: to record what a guard has passed, and to be able to verify a credential later.
  • Deployment and coordination: to assign guards to polling units and account for them during an election.
  • Observation and reporting: to receive, corroborate and verify reports, and share findings through appropriate channels.
  • Accountability: to record who decided what, which is what allows YEGO to be audited.

Consent is the intended basis for holding a volunteer's own data. What happens to a credential, or to reports already filed, if a guard withdraws consent is an open question to be resolved before the policy is adopted.

4. Who can see what

Access follows the command chain and is limited to each role's geography — national, zone, state or LGA — and enforced by the server, not just hidden on screen.

  • National Stakeholders Steering Committee
  • YEGO National Structure
  • Six Zonal Structure
  • State Coordinators
  • LGA/Community Coordinators
  • Electoral Guards/Observers

Identity documents are visible only to the officers performing verification. Any public register of verified guards carries a guard code and state — never a home address, a telephone number or an identity document.

5. How long it is kept

The proposed periods below are awaiting legal review. When a period ends the record is anonymised: names and contact details are removed and only figures for statistics remain.

  • Applications never confirmed: 30 days
  • Applications not approved: 24 months after the decision
  • Contact-form enquiries: 24 months after they are closed
  • Contact details of people who report incidents: 12 months after the case closes (the report itself is kept as part of the election record)
  • Text of emails, SMS and WhatsApp messages we sent: 12 months
  • Sign-in sessions and one-time links: 90 days after they end
  • Guard records, certificates and the audit log: kept for accountability; the audit log cannot be edited or deleted

6. Your rights

  • ask what is held about you, and receive a copy;
  • have inaccurate information corrected;
  • ask for information to be deleted where there is no continuing obligation to hold it;
  • object to a particular use, or withdraw consent;
  • complain, and receive a response with reasons.

Make a data-protection request We confirm your email address first, then answer within 30 days.

7. Security and audit

Passwords are stored as one-way hashes. Every staff account must use two-factor sign-in. Sensitive fields are encrypted, and access is granted by role and geography. Every sign-in, decision, export and permission change is written to an append-only, tamper-evident audit log.

A breach would be disclosed to affected people rather than managed quietly.

8. Service providers

  • Cloudflare Turnstile checks that public forms are submitted by people, not bots.
  • PayPal processes online donations; YEGO never sees card details.
  • Infobip delivers SMS and WhatsApp messages such as confirmations and codes.
  • Anthropic (Claude) reads photographs of official election result sheets sent by guards and staff, when automatic reading is switched on. Only the sheet photo is sent, not the sender's details; the text it returns is checked by YEGO reviewers.
  • An email provider delivers account and enquiry emails.

This site uses no advertising or tracking technology. Signed-in staff use a strictly necessary session cookie.

9. Raising a concern

Questions, requests and complaints about personal data should go to the YEGO secretariat:

If a concern is not resolved, the framework intends that it can be escalated to the appropriate regulator under Nigerian data protection law.