The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Joash Ojo Amupitan (SAN), has declared that the era of ballot box snatching and manual manipulation of election results was gone.
He assured Nigerians that current technological safeguards were robust enough to protect every vote cast in the 2027 general elections.
Amupitan made the declaration on Wednesday in Abuja when he received the Director- General of the National Orientation Agency (NOA), Mallam Lanre Issa-Onilu, on a courtesy visit to INEC headquarters.
Both institutions used the occasion to deepen collaboration on voter education ahead of the 2027 polls.
The INEC chairman, who recalled that the presidential election is held on January 16 and governorship polls on February 6, 2027, said the commission must begin intensive civic engagement immediately, warning that voter apathy and disinformation remain dangerous threats to the integrity of the electoral process.
He said, “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.”
While acknowledging significant operational achievements recorded during the February 21 Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Area Council elections and the June 20 off-cycle Governorship election in Ekiti State — including over 90 per cent early opening of polling units, biometric authentication via the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), and swift result uploads to the INEC Result Viewing Portal IReV — the chairman said both polls exposed a troubling undercurrent of voter apathy and widespread confusion among urban voters over polling unit splits and registration transfers.
“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.
Amupitan stressed that INEC could not build a robust democracy in isolation, noting that advanced technology alone means nothing without an informed electorate.
He said, “We can purchase the finest BVAS machines, we can optimise the IReV to international standards, and we can map out the most logistical routes for material deployment. But all of these technological and administrative triumphs mean nothing if the citizens remain detached, cynical, or completely uneducated about the power of their votes.”
Describing the NOA as Nigeria’s premier organisation for civic orientation and the visit as “a vital meeting of minds”, the INEC boss said the two institutions share a constitutional responsibility to educate Nigerians on democratic culture and must co-create a decentralised, grassroots voter education campaign that goes beyond telling people when to vote.
He called for joint campaigns against vote-buying and misinformation and urged that NOA field officers be equipped with accurate technology.
