Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Joash Ojo Amupitan, has assured Nigerians that advances in technology have made ballot box snatching and manual alteration of election results ineffective, expressing confidence in the integrity of the 2027 general elections.
Amupitan gave the assurance on Wednesday while receiving the Director-General of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu, during a courtesy visit to the INEC headquarters in Abuja.
The visit focused on strengthening collaboration between both agencies to improve voter education ahead of the 2027 elections.
The INEC chairman noted that with the presidential election scheduled for January 16, 2027, and governorship elections on February 6, 2027, there is an urgent need to intensify voter sensitisation to address voter apathy and combat misinformation.
“We need to teach them why their vote matters and how our new legal and technological safeguards protect their choices. We must look the rural farmer, the marketplace woman, and the disillusioned urban youth in the eye and explain to them, in the language they understand, that because of the current technological infrastructure, the era of snatching ballot boxes or rewriting results manually is gone,” he said.
Amupitan praised the successful deployment of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), the timely opening of polling units and the rapid upload of results to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV) during the recent Federal Capital Territory Area Council elections and the Ekiti State governorship election.
However, he expressed concern over low voter turnout and confusion among many voters regarding polling unit changes and registration transfers, stressing that these issues highlight the need for sustained voter education well before the 2027 polls.
“This is a clear indicator that while our technology is moving forward, civic familiarity with the evolving system is lagging. It is a loud diagnostic signal that far more needs to be done in the area of intensive, deep-rooted voter education, and it proves that we cannot afford to wait until the eve of the 2027 polls to start talking to our people,” he said.
