From David Onuoja, Abuja
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), said, it is set to deploy a first-of-its-kind real-time readiness tracker that will monitor election preparations across all 36 States and the Federal Capital Territory instantly, as the national voter register closes in on the historic 100 million mark ahead of the 2027 General Election.
Chairman of the Commission, Professor Joash Amupitan, SAN, announced the innovation on Monday in Lagos, while on a two-day Strategic Operational Workshop for Administrative Secretaries at the Marriott Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos; where he said the meeting was designed to standardize operations, six months to the polls.
According to Professor Amupitan, the workshop will produce a uniform, Excel-based Administrative Secretary Master Operational Tracker Template directly linked to the Commission’s Election Monitoring and Support Centre (EMSC) dashboard and the Election Project Plan (EPP). The tool, he explained, will for the first time give the Commission a dedicated mechanism to track the day-to-day 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,” the INEC Chairman said. “It replaces what I call reactive panic with proactive management”.
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He added that the innovation is intended to outlive the 2027 exercise and serve as a permanent onboarding blueprint for future Administrative Secretaries. He linked it to the Commission’s broader push to keep the voter register clean and PVC collection seamless, noting that Continuous Voter Registration is one of five operational pillars under review. The others are logistics and material management, electoral technology, ad-hoc staff optimization, and financial compliance.
The Chairman also said the tracker builds on lessons from recent off-cycle polls, citing the Osun State Governorship Election where, in his words, “disciplined logistics and functioning technology delivered a transparent outcome.” The Commission, he noted, is now working to replicate that standard nationwide within the six-month window left before 2027.
On this, Lagos Resident Electoral Commissioner, Professor Ayobami Salami, described the workshop as timely and thanked the European Union through the EU Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria (EU-SDGN), implemented with Development Alternatives Incorporated (DAI), for its support.
Secretary to the Commission, Mrs. Rose Oriaran-Anthony, in her remarks said, every State delegation would leave with a logistics risk register, an ad-hoc recruitment and deployment plan, a three-month stakeholder engagement plan, and the new tracker template. The workshop drew National Commissioners, RECs, the Director-General of The Electoral Institute, Directors from Headquarters, and Administrative Secretaries from across the country.
