The Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Joash Amupitan, has urged Administrative Secretaries to avoid shortcuts and political interference in the performance of their duties ahead of the 2027 general elections.
Amupitan gave the charge on Monday in Lagos during a Strategic Operational Workshop for INEC Administrative Secretaries from the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory. Download Travel Guides
“The professionalism of state offices was largely defined by the institutional culture created by the Administrative Secretaries and their adherence to discipline, neutrality, punctuality and compliance,” he said.
“Your leadership is important. The professionalism of a State office is not by chance. It is created by the institutional culture.
“If you give in to shortcuts, the shortcuts will multiply. Let political interference in, and neutrality will be degraded.
‘If you want documentation, documentation will be institutional culture. If you expect punctuality, preparedness and compliance, those will trickle down through the organization.
“If you solve problems positively, your officers will come to you with problems, not hide them.
It is, therefore, your responsibility to create an administrative culture that can deliver a credible election,” he said.
The INEC chairman also urged the Administrative Secretaries to be professionally competent and knowledgeable enough not to be taken advantage of by anybody in the discharge of their duties.
Amupitan said the Administrative Secretary was a critical link between the policy of INEC and its implementation at the state level.
He said their duties include ensuring institutional discipline, operational readiness, administrative continuity, proper documentation and early escalation of emerging challenges.
He said Administrative Secretaries should also facilitate Electoral Officers, promote neutrality and protect the institutional independence of the Commission.
The Chairman said the lessons from recent off-cycle elections, particularly the Osun Governorship Election had shown that effective logistics, functional technology and administrative discipline are critical to credible elections.
“An election is transparent and credible when logistics move on time, when technology functions as intended, and when administrative leads maintain strict discipline,” he said.
But Amupitan said the success recorded in single-state elections must now be translated into a uniform national operational standard before the general election.
He said the Commission was in a critical six-month period of preparation and could no longer afford to have piecemeal interpretations of administrative responsibilities or different operational practices among states.
The chairman stated that the two-day workshop was designed to remove guesswork, standardize operational strategies and ensure that Administrative Secretaries understood standardized national protocols.
He said the workshop would focus on Continuous Voter Registration and Permanent Voter Card distribution, logistics and election materials management, electoral technologies, human resources and ad-hoc staff optimization among others.
Amupitan said special attention would be paid to institutional mastery of technologies such as Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), IReV, eEC8A, Election Monitoring and Support Center (EMSC), CROMS, IOMIS and PFRAS.
The Commission, he said, would also prepare a standardized Excel-based Administrative Secretary Master Operational Tracker to provide a real-time picture of state-level election preparedness.
He said the tracker would be integrated with the EMSC dashboard and Election Project Plan to enable relevant officers at the state and headquarters levels to track material distribution, ad-hoc staff training and other readiness indicators.
“Once finalized, this data-driven template will be a real-time readiness dashboard.
“It will enable RECs, Supervising National Commissioners, Secretary to the Commission and Headquarters to monitor material distribution, ad-hoc staff training and state readiness, immediately, and substitute reactive panic with proactive management,” he said.
A template, the chairman said, will be put in place to be a permanent onboarding template for future Administrative Secretaries after the 2027 election.
He urged the participants to interact with the facilitators and development partners, identify operational bottlenecks peculiar to their states and leave the workshop with a clear knowledge of their mandates.
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He said the synergy between the Administrative Secretaries and the Resident Electoral Commissioners will be key to the successful conduct of the 2027 General Election.
He expressed gratitude to the Office of the Secretary to the Commission and development partners for hosting the workshop, describing it as timely and necessary for national electoral preparedness.
Prof. Ayobami Salami, REC, Lagos State, in his welcome address, called on INEC Administrative Secretaries to improve coordination, accountability and operational readiness ahead of 2027 General Election. DownloadTravel Guides
Salami stressed the importance of strategic, systematic and collective preparation for the election.
He said the role of Administrative Secretaries was pivotal in the administration of elections and their efficiency had a direct bearing on the success of electoral operations.
Therefore, “our ability to coordinate people, resources, logistics, finance, infrastructure and administrative processes must be in line with the Commission’s broader electoral objectives,” he said.
Salami encouraged participants to share their experiences in the field and identify operational gaps and develop practical solutions that can be applied in their various states.
He said the real value of the workshop would be how well participants translate lessons from the sessions into better operations, stronger accountability and resilient systems for the 2027 election.
Mrs. Rose Oriaran-Anthony, INEC Secretary, called on the Administrative Secretaries to work more closely with the Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) to improve the preparations for the 2027 General Election.
Oriaran-Anthony said the workshop was organized by the Commission to ensure that its headquarters and state offices worked within the same framework and implemented the Election Project Plan in line with its expectations.
We’re the ones up for election. “We should not wait for it to be a few days or two days to start serious preparation and in fact doing things,” she said.
“The workshop will offer a safe space for Administrative Secretaries to openly identify operational bottlenecks especially those affecting their working relationships with RECs and jointly develop solutions,” she said.
She said the workshop will focus on logistics, recruitment and training of ad-hoc personnel, financial and asset management, staff discipline and mastery of electoral technologies.
Getting these areas right would help make the 2027 election easier to administer, she said.
