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 is gone, assuring Nigerians that current technological safeguards are 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.
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