Adedokun Waliyu The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has assured Nigerians of a credible election in 2027, promising to push beyond its past milestones.
INEC Chairman, Joash Amupitan, said this on Sunday during a Citizens’ Townhall on the 2026 Electoral Act.
“By the grace of God, the 2027 election will be the best Nigeria has ever had. The electorate of 2027 is more aware and understands the direct correlation between elections and national development,” Amupitan said at the event in Abuja.
“We want a process that guarantees the legitimacy and confidence people want to see in their system. When people trust INEC and their leaders, the country will move forward.”
Amupitan said, “Nobody is happy about the classification of Nigeria as an underdeveloped economy.”
According to the INEC boss, the electoral body is putting in the needed work to ensure that next year’s polls are credible.
He identified logistics issues as one of the challenges facing INEC in conducting elections.
“So result management and logistics are two basic issues that, from our own end, we’re trying to see how best we’re able to manage them very well, so as to enhance the transparency and credibility of the system,” he said.
Amupitan also said INEC will conduct a mock presidential election to test-run the transmission process for next year’s poll.
“Moving forward, we will conduct mock presidential elections to ensure that transmission across state lines is seamless before the actual vote,” the INEC chief told the gathering.
Debates about the real-time transmission of election results have dominated headlines in Nigeria in recent months.
It was the subject of intense debates in the 2027 presidential election after INEC reported a “glitch” in the transmission of the results for that poll.
But Amupitan, a professor of law, is assuring Nigerians of better days ahead, one year ahead of the general elections.
“Regarding the ‘glitch’ that was blamed for issues in 2023, let me be clear: the glitch is eliminated. It will not surface again,” he added.
“My audit of the 2023 election showed that while the BVAS (Bimodal Voter Accreditation System) was tested in state-level elections like Osun and Ekiti, it was not properly tested for the scale of an interstate presidential election.”
He said, “During the last FCT election, apart from that delay, we didn’t have any transmission failure, meaning that it is just a proviso, a safety. If it fails, results must still be transmitted. But our determination is that it will not fail”.
INEC has been criticised in the recent past over its conduct of elections, with critics accusing it of helping the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) and muscling the opposition.
But Amupitan, who was appointed last year, took over from Mahmood Yakubu.
The commission, last week, released the revised schedule for the 2027 election.
It fixed the presidential and National Assembly polls for January 16 and slated the governorship and state house of assembly elections for February 6, 2027.
