New INEC Chairman and a new era?

Prof Joash Ojo Amupitan, SAN, 58, is from Ayetoro Gbede, Ijumu LGA in Kogi State. He is a Professor of Law at the University of Jos, Plateau. He is also an alumnus of the university. President Bola Tinubu on Thursday, 23rd October, 2025, swore in Amupitan (SAN) as the new Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC). Tinubu had explained to the Council of State on the 9th of October, 2025, when he appointed Amupitan, that he was picked based on his apolitical stance, integrity and impeccable record of service. Tinubu told the council that Amupitan is the first person from Kogi, a North-Central state, nominated to occupy the position. Amupitan’s name was sent to the Senate and was confirmed on the 16th day of October, 2025.

Prof Amupitan took over from Prof Yakubu Mahmood who served for two terms of 10 years between 21st October, 2015 and 7th October, 2025. His regime was characterised by innovations and technical advancement. He introduced the INEC Result Viewing Portal (Irev Portal) where the hard copies of polling units results (Form EC8As) were being uploaded by the Presiding Officers of the polling units immediately after voting at the polling units for use at collation centres to verify and confirm the authenticity of the manually generated polling units results. This invention eliminated substantially the election rigging and inflation of results, which take place at the collation centres during counting of election results. According to Joseph Stalin, “it’s not who votes that counts, it’s who counts the votes.” The problem of Nigeria has not always been that people are not allowed to vote on election day; it’s that after voting, their votes are rigged in favour of candidates they didn’t vote for, especially during collation of results.

This was why the introduction of Irev Portal by INEC during the regime of Prof Yakubu Mahmood was a welcome relief to the perennial manipulation of election results during collation. With this innovation, the Anambra, Edo, and Ondo gubernatorial elections of 2020, 2021 in which Charles Soludo, Godwin Obaseki, and Rotimi Akeredolu won their elections were applauded as free and fair. None of the petitioners went to the tribunals to contest the election results as pronounced by INEC. They went to the tribunals to question the qualification of the winners of the election and of course lost all the petitions. This hope for a free and fair election spurred Nigerians to action in 2023 to vote for the candidates of their choice.

Unfortunately, INEC failed woefully to live up to the height of electoral rectitude expected of it in the 2023 general election, especially the presidential election, where INEC failed, and refused to transmit electronically the polling units results into the collation system and deliberately refused to upload the form EC8A (polling units results) on the Irev Portal, till date, for the entire world to see. INEC, under Prof Mahmood, didn’t deny that it failed to upload the results; it rather gave the reason that it was due to technical glitch. If it was true that INEC had technical glitch, why didn’t it cancel the election and conduct a fresh one? Prof Oloyede of JAMB, when he noticed that there was a technical glitch in the results of JAMB, investigated it, cancelled the results and ordered a repeat of the exam by the affected candidates. But Prof Mahmood, when it was brought to his notice that results were announced without the uploading of the results on Irev Portal, instructed that the announcement should go on and the complainants should go to court.

This meant that there was a deliberate, pre-planned strategy to rig the 2023 presidential election in favour of particular candidate by INEC under Mahmood. There were three elections held on that day, and the technical glitch occurred only in the presidential election while the senatorial and House of Representatives elections didn’t report similar glitches. Most Presiding Officers confessed openly that they were told not to transmit the presidential election results using BVAS or uploading them on the Irev Portal. This was, in addition, that in some places people were denied their PVCs, and in some places, people were forcefully stopped from voting. In all these circumstances, Prof Mahmood did nothing and said nothing. The perpetrators of these crimes were not arrested and prosecuted for the atrocities.

It was not surprising that these atrocities found their institutionalisation in the subsequent Imo, Kogi, and Edo gubernatorial elections held during 2024 in which INEC original or cloned result sheets were given to politicians before election day to prefill with fake results which were criminally uploaded onto the Irev Portal on the election day by highly compromised INEC election officers. Again, nobody was arrested for such ignoble results even when INEC publicly acknowledged that some of the original result sheets with fake results didn’t emanate from it. In most of the polling units in Kogi gubernatorial election, the number of accredited voters were less than the number of votes cast yet the elections were not cancelled in such areas. At the end of the day, the complainants were asked to go to court and the judiciary was used to stamp the obvious abnormalities in the elections conducted by INEC.

One of the obvious abnormalities was the decision by the courts that it’s not mandatory for INEC to electronically transmit or upload the polling units results on the Irev Portal or any other technological device deployed for the purpose by INEC. The court ruled that INEC has the discretion to transmit or not. It is unfortunate that even INEC, which canvassed before the National Assembly to make electronic transmission of results compulsory and got it would turn around to canvass in the courts that it’s discretionary for them to electronically transmit results. This is condemnable actually because the whole idea of the rule of law is to eliminate the discretionary powers of agencies serving the people. Rule of law demands that everything, including government activities, must be done in accordance with the law.

Section 47(2) of the Electoral Act makes the use of the card reader to capture accredited voters compulsory. This law makes electronic accreditation mandatory. Section 62(2)(3) of the Electoral Act instructs that the Commission shall compile, maintain and update, on a continuous basis, a register of election results to be known as the National Electronic Register of Election Results which shall be a distinct database or repository of polling unit by polling unit results, including collated election results, of each election conducted by the Commission in the Federation, and the Register of Election Results shall be kept in electronic format by the Commission at its national headquarters, and any person or political party may obtain from the Commission, on payment of such fees as may be determined by the Commission, a certified true copy of any election result kept in the National Electronic Register of Election Results. This law again makes electronic transmission and storage of polling units results mandatory and available for any person to use for any purpose he/she needs,.

Section 64(4)(5) of the Electoral Act even insisted that without the electronically transmitted accredited voters and votes, no collation should take place. INEC, itself, confirmed the mandatory nature of these electronic transmission of results in its paragraph 38 of its Regulations and Guidelines for the Conduct of Elections 2022 when it provided that “on completion of all the Polling Unit voting and results procedures, the Presiding Officer shall electronically transmit or transfer the result of the Polling Unit, direct to the collation system.  Use the BVAS to upload a scanned copy of the EC8A to the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV)” It went further to state in paragraph 48(a) that “an election result shall only be collated if the Collation Officer ascertains that the number of accredited voters agrees with the number recorded in the BVAS and votes scored by political parties on the result sheet is correct and agrees with the result electronically transmitted or transferred directly from the polling unit as prescribed in these Regulations and Guidelines.” INEC even made it clear that where the manually generated results were not correct, electronically transmitted results should be used to declare the results. It states in paragraph 48(b) that “if a Collation or Returning Officer determines that a result from a lower level of collation is not correct, he/she shall use the result electronically transmitted or transferred directly from that lower level to collate and announce the result.”

Unfortunately, the courts destroyed these provisions by ruling that the electronic transmission of results is not mandatory on INEC. Prof Amupitan, therefore, inherits a broken INEC which requires attitudinal change as well as electoral amendments to attain to its expected level of performance. Even with the present electoral laws, Amupitan can still deliver free, fair, and credible elections in Nigeria as it happened in Edo State, when Obaseki defeated Adams Oshiomohle-led Ize Iyamu APC campaign team with the just deployment of the BVAS and Irev Portal. He can still ask for electoral amendments of the Electoral Act to still enshrine the Irev Portal and electronically transmitted results in the Electoral Act unequivocally.

Nigerians expect a new era with Joash Amupitan. It’s only a free and fair election in Nigeria that can guarantee the development and advancement of Nigeria. Fraudulent elections will eventually lead to the destruction of our democracy as there’s a limit to the injustice people of a country can tolerate. They may resort to violence if peaceful transition through free and fair election becomes impossible. Tinubu charged Amupitan, after the swearing in, to protect the integrity of our elections and the electoral process. Amupitan describes his emergence as a divine mandate and vowed to uphold the highest standards of integrity, transparency, and discipline in all his activities. Since he claims divine mandate, may God bless him if he does well, but punish him if he deceives Nigerians.