The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has scheduled a nationwide mock accreditation and poll exercise for November 28, 2026.
INEC explained that the mock poll is designed as a full-scale simulation of the presidential election process.
The exercise will run across all 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory, with the explicit goal of verifying whether upgraded voter accreditation systems and electronic result transmission can function under conditions approximating a real national poll.
INEC Chairman Prof. Joash Amupitan (SAN) announced the plan on Thursday during a dialogue at Chatham House in London, organised in partnership with the Kimpact Development Initiative.
Speaking under the theme “Nigeria’s 2027 Elections: Democratic Trajectory and Regional Stability Beyond the Ballot,” Amupitan framed the mock exercise as a critical checkpoint.
He said: “On the 28th of this month, we will conduct a mock accreditation and voting exercise across all states of the federation to simulate the presidential election and verify that we have gotten both accreditation and electronic result transmission right.”
At the centre of the test are two technologies that became flashpoints in the 2023 general elections: the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV).
BVAS devices are used at polling units to authenticate voters through fingerprint or facial recognition before they cast ballots.
IReV is the online portal intended to display scanned result sheets from those units in near real time, theoretically allowing the public and parties to monitor the process and reduce opportunities for manipulation at higher levels of collation.
Technical failures and delays with both systems in 2023 contributed to a sharp erosion of public confidence.
Amupitan acknowledged this directly, describing the “significant trust deficit” left by the last general election as damage from which the commission has “not yet fully recovered.”
Rather than introduce an entirely new technological architecture, INEC has opted to upgrade the existing systems and add automated validation checks at the polling-unit level.
According to Amupitan, the core vulnerability in Nigerian election result management has not been at the polling units themselves but at the collation centres, where results are aggregated.
The new technical safeguards are intended to block the upload of inaccurate polling-unit figures or results that reflect over-voting before they ever reach IReV.
“If a result is not accurate at the polling unit, it will not go to IReV at all,” he said. In principle, this shifts the point of enforcement earlier in the process and aims to prevent the transmission of compromised data that previously fuelled disputes.
Practical improvements to the BVAS fleet accompany these software changes. INEC is constructing climate-controlled storage facilities across the states to protect the devices from extreme temperatures that contributed to malfunctions in 2023.
The commission has also procured additional machines and lowered the maximum number of registered voters assigned to each device from 1,250 to 850. Polling units exceeding that threshold will receive multiple devices, a change intended to reduce pressure on individual machines and shorten queues.
Meanwhile, Amupitan reported that INEC has received a substantial portion of its 2027 election budget but is still awaiting the balance, which includes allocations for the recruitment and welfare of ad hoc personnel. He expressed optimism that the outstanding funds would be released before the end of November.
The commission points to recent off-cycle elections, Anambra and Osun governorship polls, Federal Capital Territory Area Council elections, the Ekiti governorship election, and 16 legislative by-elections, as practical laboratories in which operational weaknesses were identified and addressed.
In Anambra and Osun, results were declared the day after voting, marking an improvement over previous protracted timelines. “Every election is a lesson,” Amupitan said. “The 2023 general election was a major lesson for Nigeria, and the Anambra election was another.”
Amupitan closed by urging young Nigerians to participate actively and to resist misinformation. The mock poll itself will offer an early, public opportunity to judge INEC on whether the technological and procedural reforms match the scale of the challenge.
