On Thursday, October 24, 2025, Joash Amupitan, a Professor of Law and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, SAN, assumed office as the 13th Chief Electoral Umpire of Nigeria and the 6th Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC.
Like most of his predecessors, Amupitan comes very highly recommended. The initial anxiety that President Bola Tinubu might appoint a politically-exposed person to lead the INEC has died down. This is more so as the rumour that he was once Tinubu’s legal consultant has been proved false. Indeed, the president deserves commendation for the quality of choice he made.
Uppermost in Professor Amupitan’s mind should be the urgent need to restore the confidence of the Nigerian electorate in the power of the ballot box. His immediate predecessor, Prof Mahmood Yakubu, raised the hopes of Nigerians, especially the youth, and mobilised them to register and vote. But the “glitch” in the Presidential Election of February 23, 2023, has not been convincingly explained to Nigerians. It was a betrayal of trust that made many voters lose confidence.
Amupitan’s tenure will be judged by the degree to which he and his team are able to make Nigerians vote again – en masse. It will also be measured by the level to which their votes count and produce elected leaders rather than the Judiciary deciding for them. Transparent and credible elections will reduce the high volume of expensive rush to election petition tribunals and sanitise our electoral process. This should be uppermost in Amupitan’s mind.
The INEC under Amupitan should be proactive in fighting for its independence. The tenures of Prof Attahiru Jega and Prof Yakubu showed that INEC Chairmen can lead the struggle for progressive changes. INEC’s financial independence is a must. The Commission should partner with stakeholders and push for direct funding from the Federation Account. We must move closer to the end of ruling parties’ virtual ownership of INEC.
The internal drive to digitalise INEC’s operations must continue. Jega pioneered the voter’s smart card for accreditation, while Yakubu led the creation of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, BVAS, and other technologies which were albeit mismanaged.
We hope Amupitan will advance existing technologies to the point where they can actually produce real time, credible results with minimal human interference. We want to see the end to ballot snatching, writing of results by rogue politicians, election-related violence and falsification of results at the collation centres.
The personal character of an INEC Chairman is central to the success or failure of his tenure. Prof Humphrey Nwosu, unarguably the best Electoral Chairman in our history, rallied his team to give Nigeria the best election ever on June 12, 1993 despite pressures from the military government, his employers. This is what we expect from Amupitan who sees his appointment as “divine”.
We wish him success.
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