The chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Joash Amupitan, says the commission has not received certified true copies of two recent Federal High Court rulings. One concerns the candidacy of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and the David Mark-led African Democratic Congress leadership. The other concerns an order that he present the president’s academic credentials.
His reasoning is sound in the narrow sense. A judgement becomes an administrative instruction when it is served. INEC has been burned before by documents that trended online and were later disowned by the courts. “I will look at what the order says and then know what to do accordingly,” he said. That is what a careful lawyer says. It is also what a slow institution says.
The same briefing produced harder material. Fifty-four registration officers indicted for sabotaging voter registration are full-time staff of the commission. Amupitan said there would be no cover-up and that offenders would face prosecution. He also announced that web cameras would be replaced by an application camera, after artificial images were found on the register. A new artificial intelligence governance framework has been approved, developed with international partners.
Read those items together and a pattern appears. The technology improves after the scandal, not before it. The card reader arrived after years of manual fraud. Biometric verification arrived after a register full of dead voters. Each upgrade is genuine. Each is a response to a failure that was visible in advance. The incentive inside the commission is to defend the process, not to fix it early.
On early voting for journalists, security agents and election officials, the chairman was candid. INEC proposed it during the amendment of the Electoral Act and the National Assembly declined. That admission is more useful than most press conferences, because it names the institution that closed the door.
Winners: INEC, which gains time and legal cover by waiting for service. Losers: Parties and candidates who need clarity before the campaign calendar tightens, and the supervisors of the 54 indicted officers, whose oversight is now public.
Bottom Line: Waiting for service is proper procedure and poor preparation. A commission that learns of court orders the same way the public does is not in control of its own calendar.