The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has deepened the use of technology to monitor the movement of materials during the January 16 and February 6, 2027 general elections.
INEC Chairman, Joash Amupitan, disclosed this on Monday during a workshop in Lagos organised by the Commission for Administrative Secretaries from across the country.
The workshop was attended by senior officials of the electoral agency.
Amupitan, a Professor of Law and Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), described the innovation as a “real-time readiness tracker”. Africans& Diaspora
He described the innovation as a first-of-its-kind, real-time readiness tracker for monitoring election preparations simultaneously across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
Amupitan, who said that in the past, the Commission lacked a dedicated, uniform mechanism for tracking the operational duties of Administrative Secretaries, stressed that the new tool would bridge that institutional gap.
He explained that, once deployed, the tracker would give Resident Electoral Commissioners, Supervising National Commissioners, the Secretary to the Commission and the headquarters instant visibility into material distribution, ad-hoc staff training and state-level readiness.
Amupitan said the measures would replace “reactive panic with proactive management”.
The chairman, who said the innovation would also outlive the 2027 polls, said it would serve as a permanent onboarding blueprint for future generations of Administrative Secretaries.
INEC has used the Bi-modal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) to accredit voters and transfer results after counting and recording them in Form EC8A to the INEC Result Viewing (IReV) Portal.
Amupitan reiterated the Commission’s determination to build on the success of recent off-cycle elections, which, he said, demonstrated its capacity for operational discipline, technical competence and administrative integrity.
The commission has successfully conducted off-cycle governorship elections in Anambra, Ekiti and Osun states, as well as National Assembly and Houses of Assembly by-elections in some states and FCT council polls under Amupitan’s watch.
The January 16 and February 6, 2027 general elections will be the first to be supervised by the chairman.
The INEC chairman warned workers who would be involved in the elections to discharge their duties with integrity, adding that there would be consequences for manipulation of results or other infractions.
Amupitan said the true measure of electoral success is determined not in meeting rooms in Abuja but in the Local Government Areas, Registration Area Centres and polling units where field officers handle the electoral process.
He said holding elections simultaneously across the 36 states and the FCT would demand a higher standard of performance than any single-state poll, adding that the workshop would produce a standardised, Excel-based Administrative Secretary Master Operational Tracker Template, linked directly to the Commission’s Election Monitoring and Support Centre (EMSC) dashboard and the Election Project Plan (EPP).
Amupitan insisted that electoral officers found guilty of taking shortcuts or interfering administratively with processes leading to the polls would have themselves to blame.
He emphasised that INEC would keep the voter register clean and make PVC collection seamless, describing the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) as one of five operational pillars under review at the workshop, alongside logistics and materials management, electoral technology, ad-hoc staff optimisation and financial compliance.
A major problem with national elections in the past has been ineffective distribution of materials and general logistical challenges.
But, in the three off-cycle state elections and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) council poll conducted under Amupitan’s watch, there has been clear improvement in the distribution of materials.
highlights challenges facing INEC
At the Southwest Zonal Interactive Meeting and Readiness Assessment for the 2027 General Election, Amupitan said the engagement was a departure from more than two decades of administrative tradition in which zonal preparations were handled solely through headquarters directorates.
He said the Lagos event marked the commencement of a six-zone national tour designed to assess the Commission’s operational preparedness ahead of the elections.
Amupitan identified voter apathy, a lingering trust deficit, and the spread of misinformation and disinformation as key challenges confronting the Commission, stressing that the conduct and competence of field staff remained the Commission’s strongest defence against false narratives.
On voter registration, the INEC boss explained that the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) conducted in three phases between August 2025 and July 2026 recorded a cumulative 10,772,421 new registrants, subject to ongoing Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) verification.
He said during the third phase of the CVR, the Commission introduced, for the first time, an Online Registration Portal to ease access for eligible voters, alongside a new Printable Permanent Voter’s Card (PVC) technology first deployed during the Osun State election, in line with Section 18(1) of the Electoral Act.
He explained that the National Register of Voters was approaching the 100 million mark, assuring that no eligible Nigerian would be disenfranchised due to logistical bottlenecks in PVC distribution.
The INEC chairman said the Commission was refining its Result Management Systems, including the recently introduced eEC8A, to strengthen the verifiability of results from the polling unit to the national collation centre.
Reiterating the Commission’s zero tolerance for partisan conduct and administrative negligence among staff members, he said Section 26 of the Electoral Act mandates an oath of neutrality for Electoral Officers, Presiding Officers, Returning Officers and security personnel involved in elections.
He said the Commission was finalising a new salary and welfare package for staff, members and RECs.
Amupitan said the new structure includes the newly created Consolidated Election Management Body Salary Structure (CEMBSS), which took effect from January 1, and a 150 per cent increase in overhead allocations to states effective from July 1.
Lagos State REC, Prof. Ayobami Salami, said the state was honoured to host the maiden edition of the zonal engagement.
He said electoral credibility is built over time through early preparation, competent personnel and effective coordination.
Salami said the Southwest zone presented a diverse electoral environment requiring readiness assessments that go beyond routine checklists to examine the resilience of logistics, the reliability of technology and the strength of stakeholder engagement across the six states.
Secretary to the Commission, Mrs Rose Oriaran-Anthony, said the workshop would ensure that the national and state offices operate from the same Election Project Plan, while equipping Administrative Secretaries with updated knowledge of new policies, technology and administrative procedures.
She said every state delegation was expected to leave the workshop with a logistics risk register, an ad-hoc recruitment and deployment plan, and a stakeholder engagement plan for the next three months, alongside the new tracker template.
The workshop, organised under the auspices of the Office of the Secretary to the Commission with support from DAI-EUSDGN, drew participation from National Commissioners, Resident Electoral Commissioners, the Director-General of the Electoral Institute, directors from headquarters, and Administrative Secretaries from the 36 states and the FCT.
INEC Director of Planning and Monitoring, Mrs Helen Ajayi, said the interactive meeting was designed around four key goals.
She said the goals included assessing the state of preparedness of the Southwest states through the presentation of situation reports on logistics, ad-hoc staff recruitment, technology, security, training, voter education and stakeholder engagement; identifying operational and logistical challenges within the states that could affect the successful conduct of the election; providing departmental updates on voter registration, the collection of PVCs, and the deployment and management of other ICT resources; and aligning all staff members with the Commission’s Code of Conduct, as well as its operational and logistics readiness.
