INEC plans nationwide mock election test on November 28

Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission plans to hold a nationwide mock accreditation and voting exercise on November 28, 2026, to test upgraded systems ahead of the 2027 general elections, chairman Joash Amupitan said.

The exercise will simulate a presidential election and assess the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, or BVAS, and electronic transmission of results. Amupitan announced the plan during a discussion at Chatham House in London. The exercise is scheduled, and its completion and results have not yet been reported.

Amupitan said INEC had introduced technical safeguards intended to prevent inaccurate polling-unit results and figures involving overvoting from being uploaded to its Result Viewing Portal, known as IReV. He said the commission’s review of election operations identified collation centres, rather than polling units, as a central source of result-management problems.

He said INEC had chosen to upgrade its existing election technology rather than introduce an entirely new system before 2027. The commission also reduced the maximum number of voters allocated to each BVAS device from 1,250 to 850. Polling units with more than 850 registered voters...