2027: Eyes of 200m Nigerians, world are on us, INEC Chairman tells staff

Ahead of the 2027 General Election, the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Joash Amupitan, SAN, on Monday, declared open the South-West Zonal Interactive Meeting and Readiness Assessment for the 2027 General Election, describing the engagement as a departure from over two decades of administrative tradition in which zonal preparations were handled solely through headquarters directorates. The event, held at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos, marked the commencement of a six-zone national tour designed to assess 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 set for Saturday, 6 February 2027. Professor Amupitan, according to an INEC bulletin yesterday, was accompanied by National Commissioners and Directors from the Commission's headquarters to engage directly with Electoral Officers and administrative staff, whom he described as the frontline guardians of Nigeria's democracy. He said the true measure of electoral success was determined not in meeting rooms in Abuja, but in the Local Government Areas, Registration Area Centres, and polling units where field officers handle the daily mechanics of the electoral process. The Chairman noted that the Commission 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, however, cautioned that the scale of the 2027 General Election, a simultaneous exercise across 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, would demand a higher standard of performance than any single-state exercise. Professor 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 Chairman disclosed that the Continuous Voter Registration (CVR) exercise, conducted in three phases between August 2025 and July 2026, had recorded a cumulative total of 10,772,421 new registrants, subject to ongoing Automated Biometric Identification System (ABIS) verification. He said the third phase of the CVR introduced, for the first time in Nigeria, 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. Prof. Amupitan said the Commission's National Register of Voters was approaching the 100 million mark, and reaffirmed the Commission's commitment to ensuring that no eligible Nigerian is disenfranchised due to logistical bottlenecks in PVC distribution. On technology, 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. He restated the Commission's zero-tolerance stance on 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 INEC Chairman also disclosed that the Commission was finalising a new salary and welfare package for INEC staff, Commission Members, and Resident Electoral Commissioners, including the newly created Consolidated Election Management Body Salary Structure (CEMBSS), which takes effect from 1 January 2026, and a 150 per cent increase in overhead allocations to states effective 1 July 2026. In his welcome address, the Resident Electoral Commissioner for Lagos State, Professor Ayobami Salami, described Lagos as honoured to host the maiden edition of the zonal engagement, noting that electoral credibility is built over time through early preparation, competent personnel, and effective coordination rather than determined solely on Election Day. Professor Salami said the South-West 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. He commended the Commission's leadership for prioritising early preparedness and described the Commission's personnel as its greatest asset in safeguarding the credibility of the 2027 General Election. Setting out the objectives of the engagement, the Director, Planning and Monitoring, Mrs Helen Ajayi, told participants that the interactive meeting was designed around four key goals: to assess the state of preparedness of the South-West states through the presentation of situation reports on logistics, ad hoc staff recruitment, technology, security, training, voter education and stakeholder engagement; to identify the operational and logistical challenges within the states that could affect the successful conduct of the 2027 General Election; to provide departmental updates on voter registration, the collection of Permanent Voter's Cards, and the deployment and management of other ICT resources; and to align all staff with the Commission's Code of Conduct as well as its operational and logistics readiness ahead of the elections. The interactive session featured departmental engagements covering voter registration, electoral technology, staff conduct, logistics, and state-level situation reports from Resident Electoral Commissioners across the South-West zone. The Lagos engagement marks the opening leg of a six-zone national tour by the Commission's leadership, as INEC intensifies preparations for what will be one of the most closely watched electoral cycles in Nigeria's democratic history. Never miss a moment! Get the stories shaping Nigeria, delivered straight to your phone. Follow Peoplesdaily Newspaper on WhatsApp for breaking news, exclusive reports, and the headlines everyone will be talking about, before anyone else.