The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) will hold a nationwide mock accreditation and voting exercise on Saturday, November 28, to simulate the 2027 presidential election and test its technology before Nigerians go to the polls. INEC Chairman Professor Joash Amupitan announced the plan on Thursday at a dialogue at Chatham House in London, according to Channels Television, Vanguard and The Punch.
The exercise comes about two months before the presidential and National Assembly elections, which INEC has fixed for January 16, 2027. Governorship and state assembly elections are scheduled for February 6, 2027.
What the mock election will test
Amupitan said the exercise would take place across all states of the federation and would mimic a presidential election. Its main goal, he explained, is to confirm that voter accreditation and the electronic transmission of results both work as planned.
The key tools under test are the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), the device used to verify voters’ identities at polling units, and the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV), where polling unit results are uploaded for the public to see. TVC News reported that INEC has bought additional BVAS devices and cut the maximum number of voters assigned to a single machine from 1,250 to 850, meaning polling units with more registered voters will get more than one device.
Lessons from 2023
The INEC chairman openly acknowledged that controversies around the 2023 presidential election damaged public confidence in the commission. In that election, delays in uploading presidential results to IReV became a central issue in legal challenges by opposition candidates.
According to Channels Television, Amupitan said INEC’s post-2023 audit found that the most serious failures in result management happened at collation centres rather than at polling units. To close the gap between polling unit figures and collation sheets, he said the commission has built validation checks into its system to stop inaccurate results, including figures that show over-voting, from being uploaded to IReV.
He also pointed to recent off-cycle elections, including the Anambra governorship poll, as evidence of improvement, noting that the Anambra result was declared the day after voting, Vanguard reported. He named insecurity, logistics and result management as INEC’s three top priorities for 2027.
Funding and the voters’ register
On money, Amupitan said INEC has received a substantial part of its 2027 election budget but is still waiting for the balance, part of which is meant for recruiting and paying ad hoc election staff. He said the commission had been assured the outstanding funds would be released before the end of November.
The chairman also addressed the controversy over suspected AI-generated photographs in the preliminary voters’ register, which INEC flagged last month. Pointblank News reported that INEC has identified officials in about 10 states linked to the affected records and that they will face disciplinary action. Opposition parties have raised concerns about the register’s credibility, while INEC says the problem records are being cleaned before the final register is certified.
Why it matters
The 2027 vote will be the first general election conducted under the Electoral Act 2026, and the political temperature is already high, with the governing All Progressives Congress and opposition parties campaigning across the country. Many voters and civil society groups say public trust in the technology will be key to accepting the results.
A mock exercise of this scale gives INEC a chance to spot technical and logistical problems, such as device failures, network gaps and slow uploads, while there is still time to fix them. It also gives parties, observers and the media a preview of how the process is expected to work on election day.
What happens next
INEC is expected to publish details of where the mock exercise will hold and how members of the public, party agents and observers can take part in the coming days. After November 28, the commission is likely to report on its findings and any adjustments to its systems. Observers will be watching closely to see whether results move smoothly from polling units to IReV and whether the release of the remaining election funds happens by the end of the month, as promised.
Sources: Channels Television, Vanguard, The Punch, TVC News, Pointblank News, TheNiche.
