I won’t accept any political appointment after my tenure ends at INEC - Amupitan

 Joash Amupitan, chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), says he will not accept any political appointments after his tenure at the commission.

 

Amupitan  spoke on Thursday at a Chatham House panel titled “Nigeria’s 2027 elections: Democratic trajectory and regional stability beyond the ballot” in London.

 

Last November, Mahmood Yakubu, the immediate past INEC chairman, was among 32 ambassadorial nominees whose names President Bola Tinubu forwarded to the senate for confirmation.

 

Yakubu was later designated as Nigeria’s non-career ambassador to Qatar.

 

 

During the panel, Amupitan was asked whether he would commit to rejecting political or diplomatic appointments after leaving office, unlike his predecessor, who accepted an appointment from the president whose election he oversaw.

 

“I’m not going to accept any appointment from anybody because coming to serve here is based on trust,” he said.

 

“And then I took an oath of allegiance, not only to be neutral, but to ensure that the conduct of the election is free, fair, and credible.

 

 

“It’s a national assignment, and somebody must do this job. It’s not a job that you want to spend five years and at the end of the day you’re not going to even serve yourself.

 

“All my life I have served the public, so there should be occasion where you should also have time to serve yourself.

 

“Because I’m a professor of corporate governance. I know where the hidden wealths are in this world, part of which are in Nigeria. So, a lot of people are looking for it. I should also be part of it.”

 

INEC READINESS FOR 2027

 

 

On public confidence in INEC, Amupitan said glitches in the transmission of results during the 2023 elections had eroded trust in the commission.

 

He said the electoral body had taken steps to ensure the smooth and efficient conduct of the 2027 polls.

 

“We found, for instance, that the problem of election result declaration and management in Nigeria is not even at the polling unit, it’s at the collation centres,” he said.

 

“The issue of transmission of results in 2023 was because the result could not be uploaded on the IReV.

 

“So, we decided that whatever that is going to be uploaded from the polling unit is accurate, because in 2023 there were all manner of things —results that were not correct, results that were full of over-voting were uploaded on the IReV.

 

“But now, we have devised a safeguard where if the result is not accurate at the polling unit, it will not even go to the IReV.”

 

Amupitan added that INEC had reduced the number of voters assigned to each Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) device from 1,250 to 850 to speed up accreditation, while strengthening collaboration with security agencies to improve voter safety.