By Faith Anisiobi, The Sight News
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has commenced a six-zone national readiness assessment ahead of the 2027 General Election, with Chairman Prof. Joash Amupitan, SAN, announcing plans to deploy Nigeria’s first real-time election readiness tracker.
Amupitan disclosed this on Monday, September 7, 2026, at separate engagements in Lagos, where he declared open the South-West Zonal Interactive Meeting and Readiness Assessment and a two-day Strategic Operational Workshop for Administrative Secretaries.
The South-West engagement, held at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Ikeja, marked the beginning of the Commission’s six-zone tour aimed at assessing its operational preparedness for the 2027 elections.
The Presidential and National Assembly elections are scheduled for January 16, 2027, while the Governorship and State Houses of Assembly elections will hold on February 6, 2027.
Amupitan said the zonal engagements represented a departure from more than two decades of administrative practice in which preparations were largely coordinated through the Commission’s headquarters directorates.
He said the exercise would enable National Commissioners and Directors to engage directly with Electoral Officers and administrative staff, whom he described as the frontline guardians of Nigeria’s democracy.
According to him, the success of elections is ultimately determined not in meeting rooms in Abuja but at Local Government Areas, Registration Area Centres and polling units where field officers manage the electoral process.
The INEC chairman said the Commission was building on lessons from recent off-cycle elections, particularly the Osun State Governorship Election, which he said demonstrated the effectiveness of operational discipline, technical competence and administrative integrity.
He, however, warned that the 2027 General Election, involving simultaneous elections across 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, would require a higher level of preparedness.
Amupitan identified voter apathy, declining public trust and the spread of misinformation and disinformation as major challenges, stressing that the professionalism and competence of field officers remained critical to countering false narratives.
On voter registration, he disclosed that the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) conducted in three phases between August 2025 and July 2026 had produced 10,772,421 new registrants, subject to ongoing Automated Biometric Identification System verification.
He said the third phase introduced an Online Registration Portal for eligible voters, while a new Printable Permanent Voter’s Card technology was first deployed during the Osun election in accordance with Section 18(1) of the Electoral Act.
The chairman said the national voter register was approaching 100 million voters and assured that the Commission would work to ensure that eligible Nigerians were not disenfranchised by logistical challenges in PVC distribution.
On electoral technology, Amupitan said INEC was refining its Result Management Systems, including the recently introduced eEC8A, to improve the verifiability of election results from polling units to the national collation centre
He also reiterated the Commission’s zero-tolerance policy on partisan conduct and administrative negligence, citing Section 26 of the Electoral Act, which provides for an oath of neutrality by Electoral Officers, Presiding Officers, Returning Officers and security personnel involved in elections.
The chairman further disclosed that INEC was finalizing a new salary and welfare package for its staff, Commission members and Resident Electoral Commissioners.
He said the package included the newly created Consolidated Election Management Body Salary Structure (CEMBSS), which took effect from January 1, 2026, as well as a 150 per cent increase in overhead allocations to states effective July 1, 2026.
INEC Unveils Readiness Tracker
At the Strategic Operational Workshop for Administrative Secretaries held at the Marriott Hotel, Ikeja, Amupitan announced plans for the deployment of a real-time election readiness tracker covering all 36 states and the FCT.
He said the workshop would produce a standardised Excel-based Administrative Secretary Master Operational Tracker Template linked to the Commission’s Election Monitoring and Support Centre dashboard and Election Project Plan.
According to him, the tracker would provide Resident Electoral Commissioners, Supervising National Commissioners, the Secretary to the Commission and headquarters with real-time visibility into material distribution, ad hoc staff training and state-level preparedness.
The initiative, he said, was designed to replace reactive responses with proactive election management and would also serve as a permanent onboarding framework for future Administrative Secretaries beyond the 2027 elections.
Amupitan said the tracker was part of the Commission’s broader review of five key operational pillars: Continuous Voter Registration, logistics and materials management, electoral technology, optimization of ad hoc staff, and financial compliance.
He said the initiative was informed by lessons from recent off-cycle elections, including the Osun governorship poll, and was aimed at replicating the level of operational discipline achieved there nationwide.
The Resident Electoral Commissioner for Lagos State, Prof. Ayobami Salami, described the engagements as timely, saying electoral credibility was built through early preparation, competent personnel and effective coordination rather than being determined solely on election day.
Salami said the South-West presented a diverse electoral environment that required readiness assessments to examine logistics, technology and stakeholder engagement across the six states.
The Director, Planning and Monitoring, Mrs Helen Ajayi, said the zonal engagement was designed to assess state preparedness, identify operational and logistical challenges, provide departmental updates and align personnel with INEC’s Code of Conduct and election-readiness requirements.
At the Administrative Secretaries’ workshop, Secretary to the Commission, Mrs Rose Oriaran-Anthony, said the exercise would ensure that headquarters and state offices operated from the same Election Project Plan.
She said state delegations were expected to leave the workshop with logistics risk registers, ad hoc recruitment and deployment plans, stakeholder engagement plans for the next three months and the new operational tracker template.
The workshop, organized under the auspices of the Office of the Secretary to the Commission with support from the European Union Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria (EU-SDGN), implemented by Development Alternatives Incorporated (DAI), brought together National Commissioners, Resident Electoral Commissioners, the Director-General of the Electoral Institute, headquarters directors and Administrative Secretaries from the 36 states and the FCT.
