As Prof. Joash Ojo Amupitan prepares to succeed Mahmood Yakubu as INEC chairman, he inherits an electoral body struggling with record-low voter turnout, mistrust, and allegations of manipulation. PHILIP IBITOYE writes on challenges before the designated INEC chairman.
AS Professor Mahmood Yakubu bows out after two terms in office as Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Joash Ojo Amupitan is set to take over the stewardship of Nigeria’s electoral umpire.
Last Thursday, President Bola Tinubu secured the backing of the Council of State-an advisory body comprising the president, vice-president, all former presidents and heads of state, the Senate President, Speaker of the House of Representatives, all state governors, among others-for Amupitan as his INEC chairman nominee. With his nomination almost certain to be confirmed by a compliant Senate, the Kogi State native will assume office at a fraught time-when there is a huge trust deficit in the country’s electoral system.
Declining voter turnout and waning trust
Since at least 2015, Nigeria has witnessed a downward spiral in voter turnout, even as successive INEC chairmen have launched various initiatives to improve trust in the process.
In the 2011 presidential election, there were 73,528,040 registered voters, but only 39,469,484 participated-representing 53.7 percent of the electorate. By 2015, the voter roll stood at 67,422,005, yet only 29,432,083 cast their ballots, marking a decline to 43.6 percent-10 points lower than in 2011. The situation worsened in subsequent years: voter turnout dropped to 34.75 percent in 2019-an 8.9 percent drop from 2015-and plunged further to 26.7 percent in 2023, the lowest in Nigeria’s modern democratic history.
Unlike in 2015 and 2019, when some states recorded voter turnouts above 50 percent, no state achieved such figures in the 2023 elections. Regionally, only the North-West and North-Central recorded up to 30 percent turnout, followed by the North-East with 28.63 percent. In contrast, all three zones in southern Nigeria posted less than 25 percent turnout, highlighting a stark regional disparity in civic participation.
The poor numbers from the 2019 and 2023 elections came under Yakubu’s stewardship, which began in November 2015. Despite implementing several reforms-such as the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) and the INEC Result Viewing Portal (IReV)-to enhance transparency and voter confidence, voter apathy only worsened, leaving his successor with a mountain to climb.
Electoral observers say these reforms failed to achieve their desired impact largely due to flawed implementation. Dr. Alex Vines, Director of the Africa Programme at Chatham House, and Idayat Hassan, Non-Resident Senior Associate at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), observed that logistical shortcomings and technology failures, especially IReV’s limited functionality, eroded public trust in the 2023 elections. The result-viewing portal, designed to boost transparency by displaying digital copies of result sheets from all 176,000-plus polling units, contained incomplete data even after presidential results were declared. This gap fueled rumours of manipulation and further deepened mistrust in the electoral process. However, observers note that INEC alone cannot be blamed for the trust deficit, citing widespread voter suppression, intimidation, and election-day violence orchestrated by political actors as additional factors undermining participation.
Can Amupitan restore trust and reverse voter apathy?
If history is any guide, the 2027 general election could see an even lower turnout, resulting in outcomes that fail to reflect the will of the broader population. Still, electoral observers and political analysts say Amupitan has roughly 16 months before the February 2027 polls to strengthen INEC’s credibility and rebuild public confidence in the sanctity of the ballot. Even before the law professor’s nomination, concerns were raised by stakeholders who argued that a sitting president expected to run in the 2027 election should not appoint the electoral umpire who will preside over his election.
Rauf Aregbesola, National Secretary of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and a former Tinubu ally, remarked that ‘when a principal beneficiary of manipulation selects the electoral leadership, the process is inherently compromised.’ Similarly, Chief Femi AlukoAlafe, leader of The Yoruba Initiatives-a coalition of elder statesmen and professionals-argued that allowing the president to appoint the INEC chairman ‘conflicts with the principles of fairness, transparency, and independence that should define an unbiased umpire.’ He added, ‘He who pays the piper dictates the tune. The president remains an interested party if he is a contestant. Will he nominate an antagonist?’
Critics also urged the president to look beyond academia for the INEC chairmanship. Since 1987, all chairmen of Nigeria’s electoral commission-from National Electoral Commission of Nigeria (NECON) to INEC-have been professors, apart from Chief Sumner Dagogo-Jack who led NECON from 1994 to 1998. While academics are often seen as possessing integrity and intellectual rigor, several have faced credibility issues.
For instance, Professor Maurice Iwu’s handling of the 2007 elections was widely condemned, including by the declared winner, the late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua. In recent years, at least two professors serving as INEC returning officers have been convicted of electoral fraud. In March 2021, a State High Court in Uyo, Akwa Ibom, sentenced Prof. Peter Ogban to three years’ imprisonment for falsifying results in favour of the Senate President Godswill Akpabio. Ogban, who had served as a returning officer in the 2019 general elections in Akwa Ibom North-West District, was found guilty of announcing fake election results in two local government areas-Oruk Anam and Etim Ekpo-in Akpabio’s favour. Similarly, in February 2025, the same Akwa Ibom court sentenced Prof. Ignatius Uduk to three years in prison for perjury and falsifying results during the 2019 elections Essien Udim State Constituency where he served as INEC’s collation and returning officer.
In an interview with Sunday Tribune, Brigadier General John Sura (retd), a 2023 governorship aspirant under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), advocated trying an INEC chairperson from outside academia. ‘It could be a strong, respected judge or even a retired military officer with international experience in supervising elections. Those are people who are generally apolitical,’ he said.
Nonetheless, President Tinubu adhered to precedent with his nomination of Amupitan, who brings managerial experience as Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Administration) of the University of Jos and as Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of the Governing Council of Joseph Ayo Babalola University, Ilesa, Osun State.
Born on April 25, 1967, Amupitan-whom the presidency describes as ‘apolitical’-has largely stayed out of public controversy. However, in a 2016 interview, he defended the then-Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, during the ‘budget padding’ controversy, arguing that padding was ‘not a crime under Nigerian law.’
‘As far as the Constitution of Nigeria is concerned, there is nothing that has been dishonestly or fraudulently done by the Speaker or Deputy Speaker-at least there is no proof of it-because they have acted within their legislative powers,’ Amupitan said at the time.
As INEC chairman, the Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) is expected to bring a mix of academic discipline, institutional experience, and legal reformist energy to the commission. Yet, observers caution that he will face many of the same structural and political challenges that limited his predecessors.
Result manipulation, vote buying, local-level corruption, and other issues ahead of Amupitan
During general elections, Nigeria conducts polls in 176,846 polling units nationwide. This decentralised structure means returning and presiding officers wield enormous influence, while the national chairman has limited control once voting begins. Typically, results are first declared at the polling unit by presiding officers, then collated by local government and state returning officers, before reaching the national collation centre in Abuja. As a result, manipulation often occurs at the grassroots level, long before final results reach INEC headquarters.
To limit corruption and manipulation of results at the grassroots, the Yakubu-led INEC introduced IReV to enable the immediate uploading of polling unit results to an accessible online portal. Following its relatively successful deployment in the 2022 Ekiti and Osun off-cycle elections, expectations were high for its nationwide use in 2023.
However, those hopes were dashed when thousands of polling unit results were missing from IReV days after the polls. Although Section 60(5) of the Electoral Act (2022) requires presiding officers to transmit results and accreditation figures ‘in a manner prescribed by the Commission,’ it does not explicitly mandate real-time uploads to IReV. This legal ambiguity frustrated opposition parties, many of whom claimed discrepancies between portal data and official tallies. It also prevented the losing candidates from using results uploaded to IReV to argue electoral irregularities.
Stakeholders now want the ongoing electoral law amendment to clearly compel INEC ad hoc staff to upload results in real time. Niyi Okunnu, Secretary-General of The Patriots-a body of elder statesmen led by former Commonwealth Secretary-General Chief Emeka Anyaoku-remarked that Amupitan’s ‘real burden will be how to ensure that presidential election results are compulsorily and perfectly transmitted to INEC’s portal [IReV] in real time from every polling unit.’
Similarly, Samson Itodo, Executive Director of Yiaga Africa, whose 2025 State of Electoral Integrity Report warned that the 2027 elections could be ‘the most compromised in recent history,’ urged the new chairman to sustain and enhance the IReV system.
Yet transparency alone may not solve INEC’s credibility crisis. Ad hoc staff and security personnel have repeatedly been accused of colluding with politicians in result alteration, voter intimidation, and vote buying-acts often beyond the national chairman’s direct control. In August 2025, for example, police arrested two PDP members and two INEC officials in Ogun State with large sums of cash allegedly intended for rigging the Remo Federal Constituency by-election.
Consequently, stakeholders have urged Amupitan to strengthen INEC’s collaboration with the police and the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to curb electoral bribery. They also call for tighter coordination with security agencies to prevent voter suppression and intimidation, which marred parts of the 2023 elections.