By Ajibola Olaide, JKNewsMedia Reporter
PREPARATIONS FOR the 2027 General Election have entered a new phase, with the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) launching a six-zone national readiness tour from Lagos and announcing plans for a real time tracker to monitor election preparations across the country.
JKNewsMedia.com reports that INEC Chairman, Prof. Joash Amupitan (SAN), declared open the Southwest Zonal Interactive Meeting and Readiness Assessment (SZIMRA) on Monday, 7 September 2026, at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos, describing the engagement as a break from more than two decades of administrative practice in which zonal preparations were handled solely through headquarters directorates.
He said the meeting marked the opening leg of the national tour aimed at assessing the Commission’s operational preparedness ahead of the Presidential and National Assembly Elections scheduled for Saturday, 16 January 2027, and the Governorship and State Houses of Assembly Elections (GSHAE) scheduled for Saturday, 6 February 2027.
Amupitan, who was accompanied by National Commissioners and Directors from the Commission’s headquarters, said the engagement was designed to bring the leadership directly to Electoral Officers and administrative staff, whom he described as the frontline guardians of Nigeria’s democracy.
He also said the true measure of electoral success was determined not in meeting rooms in Abuja, but in Local Government Areas, Registration Area Centres (LGA/RACs) and polling units where field officers handle the daily mechanics of the electoral process.
The Chairman said INEC was building on the success of recent off cycle elections, particularly the Osun State Off Cycle Governorship Election, which he said demonstrated the Commission’s capacity when operational discipline, technical competence and administrative integrity converge.
He cautioned, however, that the 2027 General Election, involving a simultaneous exercise across 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), would require a higher standard of performance than any single state election.
Amupitan identified voter apathy, a lingering trust deficit, and the spread of misinformation and disinformation as key challenges facing the Commission.
He stressed that the conduct and competence of field staff remained INEC’s strongest defence against false narratives.
He disclosed that the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise, 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.
The third phase introduced an Online Registration Portal (ORP) for the first time in Nigeria to ease access for eligible voters, alongside new Printable Permanent Voter’s Card (PPVC) technology first deployed during the Osun State election in line with Section 18(1) of the Electoral Act.
Amupitan said the National Register of Voters was approaching 100 million and reaffirmed the Commission’s commitment to ensuring that no eligible Nigerian was disenfranchised because of logistical bottlenecks in PVC distribution.
On electoral technology, he said INEC was refining its Result Management Systems, including the recently introduced eEC8A, to strengthen the verifiability of results from polling units to the national collation centre.
He also restated the Commission’s zero tolerance for partisan conduct and administrative negligence among staff, citing Section 26 of the Electoral Act, which mandates an oath of neutrality for Electoral Officers, Presiding Officers, Returning Officers and security personnel involved in elections.
The Chairman further disclosed that the Commission was finalising a new salary and welfare package for INEC staff, Commission Members and Resident Electoral Commissioners (CMRECs).
The package includes the newly created Consolidated Election Management Body Salary Structure (CEMBSS), which takes effect from 1 January 2026, as well as a 150 per cent increase in overhead allocations to states effective from 1 July 2026.
Resident Electoral Commissioner for Lagos State, Professor Ayobami Salami, said Lagos was honoured to host the maiden zonal engagement and noted that electoral credibility was built over time through early preparation, competent personnel and effective coordination rather than being determined solely on Election Day.
Salami said the Southwest zone presented a diverse electoral environment requiring readiness assessments that go beyond routine checklists to examine logistics resilience, technology reliability and stakeholder engagement across the six states.
The Director, Planning and Monitoring, Mrs Helen Ajayi, said the engagement would assess preparedness through state situation reports covering logistics, ad hoc staff recruitment, technology, security, training, voter education and stakeholder engagement.
It would also identify operational and logistical challenges, provide departmental updates on voter registration and PVC collection, and align staff with the Commission’s Code of Conduct and operational and logistics readiness.
The interactive session featured engagements on voter registration, electoral technology, staff conduct, logistics and state level situation reports from Resident Electoral Commissioners across the Southwest zone.
At a separate two-day Strategic Operational Workshop for Administrative Secretaries (SOWAS) at the Marriott Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos, Amupitan announced that INEC was preparing to deploy what it described as Nigeria’s first real time election readiness tracker.
The tracker will enable the Commission to monitor preparations across all 36 states and the FCT and will be based on a standardised, Excel-based Administrative Secretary Master Operational Tracker Template (EASMOTT) linked to the Election Monitoring and Support Centre (EMSC) dashboard and the Election Project Plan (EPP).
Amupitan said the Commission had historically lacked a dedicated and uniform mechanism for tracking the operational duties of Administrative Secretaries.
Once deployed, the tracker will give Resident Electoral Commissioners, Supervising National Commissioners, the Secretary to the Commission and headquarters instant visibility into material distribution, ad hoc staff training and state level readiness.
He described the initiative as a way of replacing “reactive panic with proactive management” and said it would also serve as a permanent onboarding blueprint for future generations of Administrative Secretaries.
The Chairman linked the tracker to INEC’s effort to keep the voter register clean and PVC collection seamless as enrolment approaches 100 million.
He identified Continuous Voter Registration as one of five operational pillars under review at the workshop, alongside logistics and material management, electoral technology, ad hoc staff optimisation and financial compliance.
He said the tracker initiative drew on lessons from recent off cycle elections, including the Osun State Governorship Election, and that the Commission was working to replicate the standard nationally during the six month period remaining before the 2027 General Election.
The Secretary to the Commission, Mrs. Rose Oriaran Anthony, said the workshop would ensure that headquarters and all states 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 Development Alternatives Incorporated and the European Union Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria, drew National Commissioners, Resident Electoral Commissioners, the Director General of The Electoral Institute, headquarters directors, and Administrative Secretaries from the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
Opening the national readiness tour in Lagos, Amupitan urged INEC staff to recognise the weight of their responsibility, saying, “The eyes of 200 million Nigerians, and the world are fixed on us.”
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