Kaosara Arinola, TIAMIYU
Nigeria's 2027 General Elections are still ahead, but in Kwara State the countdown has visibly begun. Continuous Voter Registration has closed, campaign season has officially opened, and the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) recently convened a stakeholders' meeting in Ilorin to take stock of where things stand. What emerged from that gathering - figures, warnings, unresolved disputes, and hard questions from the floor offers a useful preview of the issues that should dominate campaign conversations over the next several months, and a sobering reminder of how much groundwork remains.
The numbers tell a story of engagement - and of unfinished business
The recently concluded CVR exercise in Kwara recorded 249,459 new registrations, alongside tens of thousands of voter transfers, PVC replacements, and information updates. These are healthy signs of civic interest. But INEC itself has cautioned that the new-registration figure is still tentative, pending a cleanup exercise to weed out multiple registrations, underage entries, and other irregularities. That caveat matters. Every actor in this process - political parties, candidates, and voters alike should treat the current numbers as provisional and resist the temptation to build campaign narratives or turnout expectations on a figure that may still shift.
There is also unfinished administrative work with real electoral consequences. Six local government areas in Kwara submitted requests to rename or relocate polling units and registration areas. Stakeholders reached agreement in four of them - Oke-Ero, Baruten, Oyun, and Ilorin South but Ilorin West and Moro remain unresolved. Left unaddressed, disputes like these can translate directly into voter confusion, contested results, or disenfranchisement on Election Day. Political parties and candidates should be pressing for these matters to be settled well before the polls, not treating them as a technical afterthought.
Insecurity remains the defining challenge
Perhaps the most sobering material to come out of the meeting concerns insecurity and displacement. Banditry has touched nearly every local government area in the state, with Ifelodun LGA the worst affected with 89 communities impacted, compared to smaller numbers in Irepodun, Isin, Ekiti, and Oke-Ero. Parts of Kwara North have also recorded kidnappings and killings. In some wards, entire polling units have emptied out as residents fled; in Ile-Ire Ward alone, four polling units covering thousands of registered voters relocated wholesale to other towns. Encouragingly, there are signs of recovery which include markets reopening, residents trickling back, kidnap victims released and a proposed army barracks in Omu-Aran is expected to strengthen surveillance in one of the hardest-hit corridors. But "gradual" and "expected" are not the same as "resolved".
This should be the single largest campaign issue for 2027 not as a talking point, but as a plan. Candidates owe voters something more concrete than general assurances of safety. What specifically will be done to secure polling units in red-zone communities? How will displaced voters, some of whom may still be away from their registered wards by Election Day, be accommodated? Members of the public at the stakeholders' meeting asked pointed questions about this, how ballot box security will be guaranteed and what role security agencies will play and INEC's answer, that citizens share responsibility for identifying and reporting troublemakers, is honest but incomplete. Voters deserve a fuller picture, and candidates who can articulate one will distinguish themselves.
Logistics, access, and the integrity of the vote
Beyond security, the meeting surfaced a cluster of practical issues that campaigns should not ignore simply because they sound procedural. The perennial problem of late arrival of election materials and personnel came up again, with INEC pointing to ongoing coordination with transport unions and training programs as its response - a plan still very much in progress. Questions were also raised about accessibility for voters with disabilities, to which INEC noted that existing rules already provide for their accommodation on Election Day; the real test will be whether that provision is visibly and consistently honored at the polling unit level, not just on paper. And on the increasingly common question of whether a downloaded digital copy of the PVC could be used to vote, INEC's answer was a clear no for now, with the possibility left open for future review.
Then there is the issue of political conduct itself. INEC has already expressed displeasure over reports of party billboards and campaign materials being destroyed by rival factions, and pointedly referenced the sections of the Electoral Act governing campaign conduct. Vote buying, too, was flagged as both an electoral and financial crime that will draw closer scrutiny this cycle, following earlier public warnings from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. These are not abstract concerns. A campaign season marked by material destruction, monetary inducement, or inflammatory rhetoric erodes the very credibility that elections are meant to establish.
What voters should expect from candidates
Taken together, the picture from Kwara is one of a Commission trying to be transparent about both its progress and its gaps, and a public that is asking exactly the right questions. Ahead of 2027, political parties and candidates should be judged less on rally attendance and more on whether they can speak credibly to security guarantees for at-risk communities, respect for the rules already laid down for campaign conduct, concrete rejection of vote buying, and support for smooth, accessible, well-supplied polling on election day. One audience suggestion from the stakeholders' meeting deserves particular attention: a clear, formal assignment of roles among the different security outlets involved in election duty. Ambiguity about who is responsible for what has been a recurring weakness in past cycles, and it is precisely the kind of issue campaigns and candidates can push for resolution on now, while there is still time.
If the 2027 elections are to be freer, fairer, and more peaceful than those before them, the work will not happen on Election Day itself. It will happen in the months between now and then - in whether displaced communities are resettled, whether outstanding polling unit disputes are closed, and whether every actor in the process, not just INEC, treats election integrity as a shared obligation rather than someone else's job.
Kaosara Arinola, Tiamiyu is a NYSC at the Grassroots Development Advocacy and Monitoring Centre (GDMAC), writes from Ilorin, Kwara State
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