By 
By Oluwaseun Ajayi
Wardchat, Nigerian first online electoral app, has been launched to connect voters and empower citizens to become more active in the electioneering process.
More than a social media app
“Wardchat is more than a social media app. It is a community of voters connected to build relationship and influence the electoral space,” said Country Lead, Wardchat, Kunle Lawal during the official launch of the app in Lagos.
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Touted as the world’s first social network uniquely built for an electoral community, Wardchat is a non-partisan social network helping to connect voters from the same polling unit, ward, local government and state across the country allowing to formidably determine the outcome of the voting process.
L-R: Kunle Lawal, Akin Savage, Entrepreneur; Akin Braithwaite, BOT Secretary (ADC)and Uwa Saleh- TV producer/Anchor and other distinguished guests at the official launch of Wardchat
According to Lawal, Wardchat “is an effective and smart social network with custom features built on Nigeria’s electoral structure covering 36 states and the FCT, 774 local government areas, 8000 wards and over 176,000 polling units across the nation.”
Most other apps in the country are centred on fintech, mobility, insurtech, and edtech but Wardchat is the only custom-built app targeting to digitize “the electoral space for proximal relationships using the smallest electoral unit as a determinant during registration,” said the Country Lead.
“We will play in the social media space where we have the foreign big techs like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Opera News hub.
Wardchat offers more than MyINEC, others
Apps like MyINEC mobile app has been launched by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in collaboration with PrestAds in Nigeria and the IEC mobile app by Independent Electoral Commission of South Africa (IEC). But these apps are no social networking windows. They only help users to seamlessly access information relating to the elections from their mobile phones.
The apps enable users to check, confirm or update their addresses, get election results, check registration details, and find their voting station.
Wardchat brings more to the market as a social networking and electoral app.
“What makes us different is the niche market we would be serving, which is Nigeria’s electoral community of over 73 million registered voters and over 120 million above voting age, our features are built for Nigeria’s electoral structure which isn’t an afterthought,” said Lawal.
“As of today, only Wardchat creates connections by matching user’s electoral profiles thereby helping to foster engagement among voters that lead to better electoral outcomes, targeted audience conversations and ward-centric conversations”, he added.
