2023: Wardchat launched in Nigeria to connect voters

A Nigerian non-partisan and smart social network, ‘Wardchat’ has been launched in Nigeria to connect voters from the same polling unit, ward, local government, and state across the country.

The App aims to digitize the electoral space for proximal relationships using the smallest electoral unit as a determinant during registration.

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At the launch of the App on Wednesday in Lagos, Wardchat Country Lead, Kunle Lawal, described the initiative as the world’s first social network purposely built for an electoral community.

According to him, every polling unit is a community of voters that should connect and interact more as voters, no matter how dispersed they may be.

He explained that the smart social network has custom features built on Nigeria’s electoral structure covering 36 States, the FCT, 774 local governments, 8,000 wards and over 176,000 polling units across the nation.

He said that most of the Tech Apps coming into the Nigerian market are Fintech, Mobility, Insurtech and EdTech among others while he noted that Wardchat is the only custom-built tech app aimed at digitizing the electoral space for proximal relationships using the smallest electoral unit as a determinant during registration.

“We will play in the social media space where we have the foreign big techs like Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Opera News hub but what makes us different is the niche market we would be serving, which is Nigeria’s electoral community of over 73m registered voters and over 120million above voting age. Our features are built for Nigeria’s electoral structure.

Lawal said, “As it stands 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.”

Commenting on whether the App will change the way people will vote or collect PVC for the upcoming election, Lawal elucidated that Wardchat has been created with a long-term vision and not necessarily for the upcoming election. “We are just happy this is coming at the right time for the 2023 elections. We do not want to change the way people vote, we want to facilitate and create relationships among voters that will enable them to influence each other and collaborate for more informed electoral choices.