Ahead of the 2027 general elections, Prof. Joash Amupitan, Chairman, Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), has urged Administrative Secretaries to reject shortcuts and political interference in the discharge of their duties.
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 determined by the institutional culture established by the Administrative Secretaries and their commitment to discipline, neutrality, punctuality and compliance,” he said.
“Your leadership is important. The professionalism of a State office is no accident. It is generated by 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 become institutional culture. If you insist on punctuality, preparedness and compliance, those values will permeate the organization.
“If you deal with problems positively, your officers will bring you problems rather than hide them.
“Your responsibility therefore is to build an administrative culture that can deliver a credible election,” he said.
Also the INEC chairman enjoined 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 an important bridge between INEC policy and how it was implemented 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 added that Administrative Secretaries should also support Electoral Officers, promote neutrality and protect the institutional independence of the Commission.
The Chairman said lessons from recent off-cycle elections, especially the Osun Governorship Election, had shown that effective logistics, functional technology and administrative discipline were critical to credible elections.
“An election is transparent and credible when logistics move on time, when technology functions as designed, 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 ahead of the general election.
The Commission, he said, was in a crucial six-month window of preparation and could no longer afford to have piecemeal interpretations of administrative responsibilities or different operational practices among states.
The chairman said the two-day workshop was meant to remove guesswork, harmonize operational strategies and ensure that Administrative Secretaries understood standardized national protocols.
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, he said.
Amupitan said special attention would be given to institutional mastery of technologies such as Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS), IReV, eEC8A, Election Monitoring and Support Center (EMSC), CROMS, IOMIS and PFRAS.
He said the Commission would also prepare a standardized Excel-based Administrative Secretary Master Operational Tracker to provide a real-time picture of state-level election readiness.
He said the tracker would be integrated with the EMSC dashboard and Election Project Plan, so that relevant officers at the state and headquarters levels could track material distribution, ad-hoc staff training and other readiness indicators.
“This data-driven template, once finalized, 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 replace reactive panic with proactive management,” he said.
The template, the chairman said, would also establish a permanent onboarding template for future Administrative Secretaries past the 2027 election.
He urged the participants to actively 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.
He said the synergy between the Administrative Secretaries and the Resident Electoral Commissioners would be crucial to the successful conduct of the 2027 General Election.
He commended 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, urged INEC Administrative Secretaries to strengthen coordination, accountability and operational readiness ahead of the 2027 General Election. DownloadTravel Guides
Salami emphasized the need for strategic, systematic and collective preparation for the election.
He said Administrative Secretaries have a pivotal role in election administration and their efficiency has direct bearing on the success of electoral operations.
“Our capacity to coordinate people, resources, logistics, finance, infrastructure and administrative processes must therefore be aligned with the Commission’s broader electoral objectives,” he said.
Salami urged participants to share field experiences and identify operational gaps and develop practical solutions that could be applied in their respective states.
He said the true value of the workshop would be measured by how effectively participants translate lessons from the sessions into improved operations, stronger accountability and resilient systems for the 2027 election.
Mrs. Rose Oriaran-Anthony, INEC Secretary, appealed to 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 Commission organized the workshop 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 really the ones who are up for election. “We should not wait until it is a few days or two days to begin serious preparation and in fact getting things done,” she said.
“The workshop will give a safe space for Administrative Secretaries to openly identify operational bottlenecks, especially those affecting their working relationships with RECs, and collectively develop solutions,” she said.
Logistics, recruitment and training of ad-hoc personnel, financial and asset management, staff discipline and mastery of electoral technologies will be central to the workshop, according to her.
Getting these areas right would help make the 2027 election easier to administer, she said.