Andy Ezeani
Tuesday, August 25, 2026
Every Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) goes through what can be called the Gethsemane experience at some point in his five-year stint. It is inevitable.
This is the lonely spell, a critical moment in the tenure of the country’s chief electoral officer when he will be required to take a singular consequential decision that will define his tenure. At that point, the man finds himself, literally and figuratively, on his own.
The Gethsemane moment is a point of loneliness and possibly agony. At that point, a man who hardly enjoyed a moment of privacy since he was appointed to the prime electoral office finds himself deserted by the usual crowd that had always surrounded him.
From the National Commissioners and the retinue of lieutenants, assistants and directors, to friends from around the country, politicians and even his family, the Chairman is left at this point with the burden of his office. The call made by the electoral commissioner at that hour of reckoning depends on the values and principles on which his character is anchored.
Joash Amupitan, the presiding Chairman of INEC, has not yet come to that critical juncture. He will get there someday. Before then, the Election Management Body’s helmsman, as did his predecessors, first learns to contend with the administrative maneuvres, the sundry pressures, and the preliminary bruises that go with the territory. These are preparations for the ultimate task that awaits a chairman at the appointed time.
So far, Professor Amupitan has weathered the storm of his office the best he could. At some point within the last ten months that he has been on the seat at INEC, he had come across as credible and devoid of conceit. At some other points, he had appeared rather awkward.
Amupitan has never missed any opportunity to promise that he is determined to deliver a credible and acceptable general election in 2027. He continues to assure any audience before him that the elections that will be conducted under his supervision will be credible and an improvement on the previous one. Whether he is being profound or perfunctory in his assurances will only be confirmed by time. All his predecessors said the same thing, anyway.
In any case, the previous general election the INEC Chairman references did not set any standard to beat. The calamity of 2023 should be referenced essentially as a monument to the type of malfeasance in the conduct of election that should not occur twice in the life of a country.
Not since the elections of the early 1960s in Chicago, USA, where every living person voted at least twice and every dead person voted once, had an election left an electorate so dazed with its outcome and how it came by. Amupitan must certainly be aiming for a nobler outing.
The successful conduct of the governorship election in Osun State penultimate weekend has strengthened Amupitan’s voice. His declaration a few days after the election that the Osun outing will be the benchmark for preparations, and the conduct of the 2027 general elections is understandable.
In spite of the reported break in transmission of the BVAS at some points during the Osun election, the devices and the overall conduct of the election scored remarkably well. The outcome of the polls did not also deviate from popular expectation.
The adage that success has many fathers found renewed affirmation after the success of the Osun State governorship election. In the aftermath of the election, all manner of entities and groups were falling over themselves to claim contributory credit for the re-election of Governor Ademola Adeleke.
Perhaps the most outlandish of the claims was from the All-Progressives Congress (APC), the loser in the election. APC left no one in doubt about its determination to oust Adeleke and his Accord Party.
Indeed, the National Chairman of the party, Professor Nentawe Yilwatda, called the Osun election a “must win” for the APC. Not surprisingly, the party of President Bola Tinubu mounted an all-out expedition to “kick out” the incumbent governor.
The plot did not focus on the election alone.
Months before the election, the Federal Government, in a glaringly partisan assault, excised the control and management of the funds of the local governments and handed them over to the opposition APC.
Then, during the election, the party sent an armada with no less than sixteen state governors, Senate President and top legislators, etc., to overwhelm the governor.
According to David Adeleke (Davido), the music star, and his uncle’s campaign big gun, no less than N100 billion was spent by the APC at the governorship election. Governor Adeleke survived the onslaught, thanks to INEC and the people of Osun.
Pronto, confounding claims sprang from APC quarters about how the party, from President Tinubu to Senator Francis Fadahunsi, worked for Adeleke’s re-election.Some referred to an agreement. Such unabashed mendacity.
In all the claims about who did what to make the Osun State governorship come through, not much credit has been extended to Professor Amupitan at INEC. The argument that it may be premature and, indeed, counterproductive, if not dangerous to laud him over the conduct of one off-cycle election, may be tenable, but barely.
Think about it. What if the outcome of the Osun state governorship election went counter to public expectation but was officially authenticated all the same, as had happened in some instances in the past?
What if the election outcome had deviated from what election observers and independent monitors had projected from their field research?
What if the result sheets in many polling units were glaringly mutilated to alter clearly entered figures, and yet the Returning Officers called the result with the superimposed figures? What if…
What if any or all of the above scenario had played out at the governorship election in Osun State, would the INEC Chairman, Joash Amupitan not have been excoriated in the media and various public spaces, as a scoundrel? Would one more snitch in an environment that accommodates outright electoral brigandage not find many defenders among the thriving tribe of hired hands ready to justify any wrong?
The fact that INEC deployed timely and efficiently during the Osun governorship election is a credit to the management of the election. Applause is due to the Commission that at the end of the day the will of the electorate in Osun state prevailed, and that the leadership of the electoral body did not succumb to imaginable pressure that must have been piled on them to tamper with the results.
When tomorrow’s challenge comes, Professor Joash Amupitan and the electoral commission under him will be judged by their response at the time. For the Osun election, especially with the dozens of claimants to the success of the election, including the duplicitous ones, it is not out of place to ask, what about Amupitan?He surely deserves credit on this one.
May his heart be strong enough to weather the storm of Gethsemane when the day of reckoning comes.
