Nigeria says INEC is independent. Yet the President in power has a constitutional role in choosing the person who will head the commission that conducts the election in which his party is a contestant. That alone should make us pause and ask a question we have somehow become too comfortable avoiding:
how independent is INEC really?
That is the question Nigeria should be willing to confront before the next presidential election: what exactly do we mean when we call the Independent National Electoral Commission independent?
The question is not an accusation against the present INEC chairman, Professor Joash Amupitan. It is not an allegation that he will favour the government that nominated him. It is not even a claim that every chairman appointed through the existing system has acted improperly. Those are different questions, and they should not be confused with the institutional question.
The harder question is whether an electoral umpire can ever enjoy the kind of public confidence democracy requires when the Constitution itself gives the President the power to nominate its chairman.
That is not speculation. It is the law.
Under Section 154 of the 1999 Constitution, the chairman and members of bodies established under that part of the Constitution are appointed by the President, subject to Senate confirmation. In the case of INEC, the President must also consult the Council of State. Section 157 further provides that the chairman and members of INEC may be removed by the President on an address supported by a two-thirds majority of the Senate.
There is another provision, however, that sits beside these powers and creates the constitutional tension at the centre of the matter. Section 158 says INEC, in exercising its powers of appointment and disciplinary control, shall not be subject to the direction or control of any other authority or person. INEC itself describes autonomy as one of its core values and says it is to operate independently, free from external control and influence.
So Nigeria has an electoral commission that is constitutionally declared independent, but whose most important office is filled through a process controlled in substantial part by the political executive.
Perhaps that is the contradiction we have become too accustomed to.
When Professor Amupitan became INEC chairman in October 2025, President Bola Tinubu nominated him, the Senate confirmed him and the President subsequently swore him into office. None of those steps was outside the Constitution. Indeed, they were the constitutional procedure.
And that is precisely why the argument should not be reduced to whether Amupitan is personally trustworthy.
A democracy should not depend on the personal virtue of an electoral umpire to make its electoral institution credible.
It should build a system in which even a sceptical citizen can look at the appointment process and have little reason to suspect that the umpire owes his position to one of the contestants.
Imagine the reverse situation. Suppose the opposition were in power and its president nominated the INEC chairman who would subsequently preside over an election in which that president was seeking another term. Would Nigerians who supported the opposition be completely comfortable with the arrangement simply because the chairman had promised to be impartial?
Would supporters of the governing party accept the same system without question if their own candidate were challenging an incumbent whose government had appointed the electoral commission’s chairman?
This is where the argument becomes larger than Tinubu, Amupitan or the 2027 election.
The problem is structural.
Nigeria has repeatedly treated electoral credibility as though it were mainly a matter of finding the right individual. We search for a chairman with an impressive résumé, listen to his promises of neutrality, examine his antecedents and hope that his personal integrity will carry an institution whose architecture still leaves room for political suspicion.
But elections are not supposed to be built on hope.
The current chairman understands the burden. At his first major engagements with political parties and the media, Amupitan repeatedly stressed the importance of credibility, transparency and public confidence. INEC has also declared that it is committed to conducting elections that reflect the sovereign will of Nigerians.
That is exactly what Nigerians should demand.
But there is a difference between an institution being independent in law and being perceived as independent by the public.
The distinction matters because elections are not sustained by ballots alone. They are sustained by confidence.
A candidate who loses must be able to believe the process was fair enough to accept the result. A voter must believe that his or her vote was treated with the same seriousness as every other vote. Political parties must believe that the umpire will apply the rules without fear or favour. And the public must not begin an election already wondering whether the person supervising the contest is institutionally indebted to the government whose survival may depend on the outcome.
Once that suspicion takes root, every decision becomes vulnerable to interpretation.
A delayed announcement can become evidence of manipulation. A disputed result can become proof of bias. A technical failure can become a conspiracy. An administrative decision that would ordinarily be treated as routine can acquire political meaning.
The electoral commission may know that it acted properly. But if the architecture of the institution has already weakened public confidence, explaining individual decisions becomes much harder.
This is why the debate over INEC’s independence should not wait until votes are being counted.
The time to ask whether the referee is sufficiently insulated from the players is before the match begins.
And Nigeria has had more than enough elections to know that credibility cannot be manufactured after the result has been announced.
The country has invested heavily in electoral technology, voter registration, biometric accreditation, electronic result transmission and legal reforms. The 2026 Electoral Act has introduced further changes to the administration of elections, including mandatory electronic transmission of polling-unit results.
All of that matters.
But technology cannot solve a crisis of institutional confidence.
A perfect voting machine cannot answer a political question about who appoints the person supervising the system. A result uploaded electronically is still being received by an electoral institution whose independence the public must trust. The more sophisticated the technology becomes, the more embarrassing it would be if Nigerians continued to doubt the institution operating it.
This is why the debate about INEC should move beyond the familiar question of whether the chairman is a good man.
That is too small a question for a democracy.
The bigger question is whether Nigeria has designed an electoral commission strong enough to inspire confidence regardless of who occupies Aso Rock.
Perhaps the chairman should not be selected by the President whose party will contest the election. Perhaps the appointment process should involve a genuinely independent selection mechanism involving multiple institutions and clearly defined professional criteria. Perhaps the legislature, judiciary, professional bodies, civil society or a combination of them should have a more decisive role. Those are constitutional and legislative questions for Nigerians to debate.
But they are questions that should finally be debated seriously.
Because there is a peculiar irony in the name “Independent National Electoral Commission”.
Independence is not created merely by putting the word “Independent” in the title.
It is created by the distance between the institution and those whose political fortunes it is empowered to determine.
Nigeria cannot keep telling citizens to trust the electoral umpire while leaving them to ask whether the umpire was appointed through a process that gives the government of the day too much influence over the very institution that will conduct its election.
That is not an argument against Professor Amupitan.
It is an argument for building an INEC that would remain credible even if the chairman were appointed by a president the public deeply distrusted.
The real test of institutional independence is not whether the person in charge says he is independent. It is whether the system would still look independent if the political circumstances were reversed.
That is the question Nigeria should answer before 2027.
Because democracy should not require citizens to have faith in the character of the referee.
It should give them confidence in the design of the game.
Stephanie Shaakaa shaakaastephanie02@gmail.com
08034861434
