The Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Joash Amupitan, has said the commission’s staff are the “least paid in Nigeria”.
Amupitan said this on Tuesday during a press conference and a national stakeholders’ meeting in Abuja.
“INEC staff are the least paid in Nigeria. So we felt that if we want to demand and hold our staff responsible, we should give them a living wage. And that is why we have taken some very radical steps to ensure that the welfare of INEC staff is prioritised,” he said at the event.
“We are not called civil servants, but we have been lumped under the civil service payment structure, which we have just removed INEC from, to have its own separate electoral structure and a separate salary structure from the civil service.
“So those are some of the gaps. There are many others that we have discovered, and we felt that if addressed, quality will improve.”
At the event, Amupitan spoke about the commission’s preparations for the 2027 elections, saying INEC has created an Artificial Intelligence (AI) division to combat fake news and aid results’ verification.
“The commission has established a dedicated artificial intelligence division within the ICT department. Automated AI auditing tools have been integrated into our results verification process, under a five-pillar AI governance framework, operating under mandatory human oversight,” the INEC chief said.
“An AI governance framework policy is being finalised by the commission. In partnership with international technology leaders and partners, we are integrating our AI-driven anomaly detection tools.”
He also said the electoral umpire was beefing up its election technology ahead of next year’s exercise, saying INEC is upgrading its Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) devices, among other steps.
Meanwhile, the commission says the first phase of the distribution of Permanent Voter Cards (PVCs) at all local government centres would commence on October 9, 2026.
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