Chatham House: Trust Me for 2027 Elections, Amupitan Tells Nigerians

The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Joash Amupitan, has challenged Nigerians to trust his leadership in the upcoming months of the 2027 general elections, citing his record of conducting recent off-cycle polls.

“Why must Nigerians trust me? Nigerians must trust me because, number one, I have conducted off-cycle elections—and observers agree that the recent election in Osun State marked a clear improvement,” Amupitan said on Thursday.

He made the remarks during a Chatham House discussion in London, organised in collaboration with the Kimpact Development Initiative (KDI), on the theme, “Nigeria’s 2027 Elections: Democratic Trajectory and Regional Stability Beyond the Ballot.”

Amupitan, who assumed office in October 2025, listed the governorship elections in Anambra, Osun and Ekiti, the Federal Capital Territory Area Council polls and 16 legislative by-elections among the elections conducted under his leadership.

He recalled that the 2021 Anambra governorship election took about five days to conclude, while the results of the recent Anambra and Osun elections were declared the day after voting.

The INEC chairman, however, acknowledged that the commission had yet to fully overcome the loss of public confidence following the technical problems associated with the 2023 general election.

“First, let me speak about what happened in 2023, which resulted in a significant trust deficit for INEC—damage so large that the Commission has not yet fully recovered from it,” he said.

He explained that the commission’s review of the 2023 polls identified major result management failures at collation centres and said INEC had introduced technical safeguards to prevent inaccurate polling unit results from being uploaded to its Result Viewing Portal (IReV).

“In 2023, there were instances of inaccurate results or results with over-voting being uploaded onto IReV. We have now devised a technical safeguard: if a result is not accurate at the polling unit, it will not go to IReV at all,” he said.

As part of preparations for the 2027 elections, Amupitan announced that INEC would conduct a nationwide mock accreditation and voting exercise on November 28, 2026, to test its voter accreditation and electronic result transmission systems.

“On the 28th of this month, we will conduct a mock accreditation and voting exercise across all states of the federation to simulate the presidential election and verify that we have gotten both accreditation and electronic result transmission right,” he said.

He also disclosed that the commission had decided to upgrade its existing electoral technology rather than introduce an entirely new system, citing the limited time before the next general election.

To address BVAS malfunctions linked to heat and storage conditions during the 2023 polls, INEC is constructing climate-controlled storage facilities across the states.

The commission has also acquired additional devices and reduced the maximum number of voters assigned to each BVAS from 1,250 to 850.