Situation-room modernisation — INEC, 2027 general election preparations

ERMS configured the ballot, polling-unit roster, and agent onboarding across 37 states. VESR’s situation-room plane is in pre-production, with incident, communication, and observer modules deployed to staging.

Polling units modelled: 176,846
States in phase three: 37
Real-time event latency target: <500ms
Election-day uptime target: 99.9%

Challenge

A Nigerian general election runs 176,846 polling units, 37 state operations centres, and tens of thousands of accredited observers over a 12-hour polling window. The traditional mode of operation — a physical situation room in Abuja with telephony and spreadsheet attachments — is structurally unable to absorb that volume of signal in real time.

Approach

ERMS was adopted for the ballot configuration layer, the polling-unit roster (via INEC EFLOC sync), agent onboarding, and result submission. VESR — the Virtual Election Situation Room — will replace the physical command centre during polling with a single pane that unifies incident reports (geo-tagged, severity-coded), secure multi-stakeholder communication (in-app chat and Zoom SDK), and live observer feeds for EU-SDGN and accredited domestic networks.

Deployment

Phase one deployed ERMS end-to-end to staging with a full ballot import. Phase two brought VESR online in a rehearsal scenario covering three states with synthetic polling-unit traffic. Phase three — scheduled in tranches through 2026 — extends to all 37 states with real agent onboarding.

Outcome

Nothing is live yet. What is live is the preparation. ERMS carried the ballot-configuration workflow end-to-end in staging. VESR delivered sub-500ms real-time event latency in the rehearsal. The partnership target is operational readiness 90 days before the 2027 general election.