With 80 days left before Nigerians vote for a president and members of the National Assembly, the House of Representatives has directed the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to account for its preparations for the 2027 general elections. The resolution, which followed a motion sponsored by Mansur Manu Soro and Abdussamad Dasuki, requires the commission to brief the relevant House committee within seven legislative days. The motion originally sought INEC’s appearance before the full House but was amended on the floor.
The lawmakers want a status report on voter registration, the production and distribution of Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs), logistics, technology, recruitment and training of personnel, security, risk assessment and funding. They also asked for details of appropriations, funds released, outstanding releases and the effect of any shortfall on preparations. Under INEC’s timetable, the presidential and National Assembly elections hold on January 16, 2027, while governorship and State House of Assembly elections follow on February 6.
At the centre of the motion are complaints from registration centres: inadequate equipment, too few staff, poor network, long waiting times and a surge of citizens seeking to register or update their records. The lawmakers warned that first-time voters, rural residents, persons with disabilities, students and workers stood the greatest risk of being shut out. Such complaints followed the exercise for months, with applicants at the INEC office in Area 10, Abuja, spending hours in queues in June as network failures stalled registration.
The scale of demand explains much of the strain. INEC figures show that the Continuous Voter Registration exercise, held in three phases between August 2025 and July 26, 2026, produced 10,772,421 new registrants: 2,782,589 in the first phase, 4,121,835 in the second and 3,867,997 in the third. INEC Chairman, Professor Joash Amupitan, has said 9,324,349 of them are young people, and that all new entries remain subject to biometric de-duplication. The latest register released by the commission puts the electorate at 103,428,715, up from 93,469,008 in 2023, an increase of about 10.7 per cent.
With registration closed, the more pressing test is now the cards. Nationwide PVC collection began on October 9 and is expected to run until December. However, INEC’s Lagos office said on October 13 that cards for people who registered between January 5 and July 26, 2026 were not yet available, a window covering almost eight million registrants. On the opening day of collection in Umuahia, some voters found no INEC officials at designated centres.
Amupitan has ordered a review of registration records in the South East over low PVC collection. He has also said the commission has activated printable PVC technology under Section 18(1) of the Electoral Act 2026, which he believes will end the long wait for voter cards. The INEC chairman has described what he calls a zero failure approach to logistics, covering early deployment of materials, security coordination and training of ad hoc staff.
Money is the other question lawmakers want answered. INEC asked the National Assembly for ₦873.78 billion to conduct the 2027 elections, separate from its routine 2026 budget, and more than double the ₦313.4 billion released for the 2023 polls. In July, INEC National Commissioner Mohammed Haruna said the commission had received over ₦500 billion. On October 7, the National Chairman of the Inter-Party Advisory Council, Yusuf Dantalle, urged the Federal Government to release the outstanding ₦371 billion, warning that late funding could force rushed procurement.
The lawmakers cited the Ekiti governorship election as a source of useful lessons. The June 20 poll, the first governorship election conducted under the Electoral Act 2026, recorded 97.1 per cent PVC collection among 1,059,360 registered voters, according to INEC. Yet only 384,940 voters were accredited, about 36 per cent of the register. The national picture in 2023 was similar, with fewer than 25 million votes cast in the presidential election, roughly 27 per cent of registered voters.
The House acknowledged INEC’s efforts to strengthen the electoral system but said early scrutiny would expose weaknesses in time for corrective action. The commission’s briefing will be the first formal opportunity since registration closed for lawmakers to test its figures against complaints from the field. Campaigns for the presidential and National Assembly elections have been under way since August 19.