There are offices in Nigeria where the occupant can afford to be controversial, unpopular or even misunderstood. The office of the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission is not one of them. At least, not when the country is moving towards a presidential election in which the political temperature will be high, the stakes will be enormous and almost every decision taken by the electoral umpire will be viewed through the lens of partisan suspicion.
Professor Joash Amupitan therefore occupies an office in which perception matters almost as much as procedure. By the time Nigerians cast their votes in the 2027 general election, the question will not simply be whether INEC organised an election according to its timetable. It will be whether Nigerians, particularly those who lose, can look at the process afterwards and accept that the institution in charge played it straight.
That is a formidable responsibility.
INEC has fixed February 20, 2027 for the presidential and National Assembly elections and March 6 for the governorship and State Assembly elections. The calendar has moved the election from the realm of political speculation into the realm of institutional preparation. INEC is already dealing with the machinery that must carry the country from voter registration and party nominations to campaigns, polling, collation and the declaration of results.
And Professor Amupitan is not walking into an empty room.
He succeeds an INEC chairman whose tenure was defined by intense scrutiny, technological expectations, operational controversies and a growing public demand for electoral reform. He also inherits an electorate that has become much less willing to accept “technical difficulties” as an adequate explanation for failures that affect the credibility of its votes.
The new chairman’s legal and academic credentials are substantial. INEC describes him as a professor of law, Senior Advocate of Nigeria and experienced administrator, with areas of expertise that include electoral jurisprudence and corporate governance. He has also publicly identified transparency, institutional independence and electoral credibility as central to his leadership of the commission.
But this is where the real test begins.
Credentials can earn a chairman respect before an election. They cannot earn him public trust after one.
Trust will have to be built through decisions.
It will be built when the commission applies the same standard to a powerful party and an obscure one. It will be built when a government-friendly candidate is treated no differently from an opposition candidate. It will be built when INEC refuses to bend its rules for people who have enough influence to make bending them politically convenient.
And it will be built when the commission is prepared to make decisions that anger everybody when the law requires it.
That last point deserves emphasis because electoral independence is sometimes misunderstood. An independent electoral commission is not one that keeps everybody happy. It is one that can disappoint the powerful without fear and enforce the rules without wondering whose political interests might be inconvenienced.
That is the standard Professor Amupitan should welcome, rather than resent.
He has already acknowledged that Nigeria’s electoral system faces serious problems, including malpractice, violence and vote trading. He has also identified social-media volatility, AI-driven disinformation, foreign information manipulation and logistical weaknesses as challenges that can undermine electoral confidence.
These are not peripheral concerns.
The next election will be fought not only at polling units but also on phones, television screens and social-media platforms. A false result can circulate before an authentic one is properly explained. A doctored video can acquire millions of views before the truth has finished loading. A logistical failure in one location can become evidence of a nationwide conspiracy within minutes.
INEC will therefore have to communicate with Nigerians as seriously as it conducts elections.
Silence will not always preserve neutrality. Sometimes, silence will simply leave the information vacuum to those who are most willing to fill it.
Then there is the voter register.
INEC itself has acknowledged concerns surrounding duplicate registrations, non-citizen registration, deceased voters and incomplete or inaccurate records, and has announced plans for a nationwide voter revalidation exercise ahead of 2027.
That exercise will matter enormously.
A credible election begins long before the first ballot is cast. It begins with confidence that the people appearing on the register are genuine voters and that eligible citizens are not being unfairly excluded. If the register is questioned, the credibility of the election is weakened before voting even starts.
The same principle applies to logistics.
INEC has rightly said that an election is only as good as its logistics. Polling materials must arrive. Election officials must know what they are doing. Technology must work. Results must move through the prescribed process. Contingency arrangements must exist for the things that inevitably go wrong in a country as large and complicated as Nigeria.
Nobody expects perfection.
What Nigerians should expect is preparation.
And then there is security.
INEC cannot secure Nigeria’s elections by itself. Its own engagement with the Inter-Agency Consultative Committee on Election Security makes clear that security agencies have a crucial responsibility to protect voters, election officials and materials and to prevent violence from disrupting the process.
This means the credibility of 2027 will depend partly on institutions outside INEC as well.
A voter who is too frightened to reach a polling unit has effectively been disenfranchised, whatever the sophistication of the voting technology. An election official who cannot safely deliver results cannot be expected to inspire confidence in the process. And a polling unit where intimidation determines who votes, who leaves and who stays is not rescued by the presence of a perfectly functioning machine.
The security agencies therefore have a duty to protect the election without becoming participants in it.
That distinction must remain clear.
But ultimately, Professor Amupitan will have to carry the weight of the public’s judgment because INEC is the institution Nigerians will see standing at the centre of the process.
That is why the chairman should understand that 2027 will not begin on election morning.
It has already begun.
Every decision made now is already part of the election story. As the process unfolds, appointments, procurement, procedural changes and technological choices will all come under scrutiny, particularly in light of what Nigerians experienced in 2023 and in the elections that followed. Even complaints from political parties will carry a different weight depending on the level of confidence INEC has earned by that point.
And the commission should not wait until election day to discover that credibility is difficult to manufacture under pressure.
The most important thing Professor Amupitan can build between now and 2027 is not an impressive public-relations campaign. It is a record.
What INEC needs most is a reputation that can withstand political pressure: consistency in applying the rules, transparency when decisions are difficult, and the independence to reject what the law does not permit while approving what it does. By the time the votes are counted, no party should be able to make a credible case that the commission belongs to the government, the opposition, or any particular political interest.
This is particularly important because the political battle ahead will be intense.
Presidential ambition has already begun to reshape alliances. Political parties will calculate their chances. Politicians will court voters, negotiate coalitions, fight over tickets and search for every legitimate advantage available to them. As election day approaches, the temptation to regard the electoral commission as another battlefield in the political contest will become stronger.
INEC must resist that temptation.
It is not the job of the electoral commission to produce a government Nigerians will like.
Its job is to produce an electoral process in which Nigerians can recognise their own choice.
That distinction is the foundation of democratic legitimacy.
Professor Amupitan has therefore inherited an institution whose greatest asset is not its technology, its offices or its legal authority. It is public confidence. Once that confidence is lost, even a technically correct decision can be viewed with suspicion.
The reverse is also true.
When an electoral commission establishes a reputation for fairness, transparency and competence, losing parties may still complain, as politicians everywhere do, but their complaints do not automatically become a national crisis.
That is the prize before him.
The real test is not whether politicians praise INEC when the result favours them. It is whether Nigerians can trust the process when the stakes are high, the margins are narrow and the outcome disappoints those in power.
The real prize is something quieter and much more valuable. The confidence of the ordinary Nigerian who walks into a polling unit, casts a ballot and believes that the vote will be treated with the seriousness it deserves.
That is what democracy ultimately asks of an electoral commission.
And that is why, as 2027 approaches, all eyes are on Professor Joash Amupitan.
The politicians will be watching for advantage. The opposition will be watching for fairness. The government will be watching the political consequences. Civil society will be watching the process. The media will be watching the commission’s every move.
But perhaps the most important people watching will be the millions of Nigerians who will say very little until they enter the polling booth.
They will simply want to know that their vote belongs to them.
If Professor Amupitan can help give them that confidence, history will remember more than the controversies of the election. It will remember an INEC that understood the gravity of its assignment and was strong enough to serve the voter rather than the powerful.
That is the responsibility of the office.
And with 2027 drawing closer, there is nowhere for the institution to hide from it.
All eyes are on you, Mr Chairman.
Stephanie Shaakaa shaakaastephanie02@gmail.com
08034861434
