The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has commenced work on its Election Project Plan in preparation for the 2027 general election.
According to Saturday PUNCH, a senior official at the commission disclosed that lessons learned from the 2023 general election were being incorporated into the planning for 2027.
The official revealed that INEC is already updating its election templates to enhance the efficiency and reliability of its processes for the upcoming election cycle.
The official stated, “The formulation also includes the production of the 2027 – 2031 Strategic Plan to replace the current 2022 – 2026 Strategic Plan, which ends in December next year.
“An important aspect of the current effort is the preparation of another critical document that will act as a bridge between 2026 and 2027 – the general election year – which the current 2022-2026 plan does not cover. This particular document will provide the foundation for the 2027 EPP document.
“While the 2022-2026 Strategic Plan prioritised the institutionalisation of the commission’s processes for the delivery of its mandate, focusing on capacity building, promotion of professionalism, encouraging synergy among departments and improving efficient mobilisation and utilisation of resources among others over a four-year cycle, the EPP is a comprehensive document that focuses solely on a general election.”
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Also, findings by Saturday PUNCH revealed that the EPP was first introduced for the 2015 general election and has since been produced for the 2019 and 2023 general elections.
Following the challenges encountered during the 2023 elections, INEC is refining its processes to ensure smoother operations in future elections.
According to reports, the commission faced logistical and technical challenges during the 2023 elections while managing a voter base of 93,469,008 registered voters across 176,846 polling units.
The election involved the deployment of over 1.5 million personnel, including polling staff, supervisors, and security personnel, as well as 182,491 vehicles to facilitate the voting process across Nigeria’s diverse regions.
Reports indicated that despite extensive preparations, one of the major challenges during the 2023 election was the difficulty in uploading presidential election results to the INEC Result Viewing portal.
While the system successfully managed uploads for the National Assembly elections, the presidential election results faced delays due to technical issues.
The issue was traced to a configuration error that prevented the system from correctly mapping presidential results, which are nationwide, as opposed to state-specific elections.
The commission later resolved the issue with software updates, and the first presidential election result sheet was successfully uploaded later in the evening on election day.
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