By Sanya Oni
It is no surprise that the African Democratic Congress is insistent on the immediate resignation of the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission, Prof. Joash Amupitan. First, was for the ‘high crime’ of seeking to play safe over a judgment of the court which demanded that ADC’s feuding parties and INEC under the leadership of Amupitan in particular take no further step to present the court with a fait accompli over a matter before it. Not sufficient to play the judge and jury in its own cause, it also insists on treating the appearance of any position deemed contrary to its own as treasonable.
Now, they want the head of the electoral body served on the platter over an alleged pro-President Bola Tinubu tweet in 2023. And so determined to press its case, the ADC, in a statement by its rambunctious National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, would on Saturday, lob yet another charge at the INEC boss for what it claimed were attempts (by who?) to erase the digital trail of the offending tweet – which it also says amounted to a dangerous cover-up that undermined the credibility and neutrality of Nigeria’s electoral system.
Talk of an unproven tweet suddenly becoming an issue over which the chief electoral umpire’s integrity is not only being called into question but constituting the grounds for demanding for his head!
Of course, save for the party’s army of salesmen with their all-familiar talking points on prime time television, few Nigerians would be surprised by such antics which border on desperation. Before now, the party had, much earlier, raised the alarm over what it described as a calculated plot to impose a one-party state ahead of the 2027 general elections, accusing the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) of using INEC to weaken opposition parties.
Let’s take a look at the tragedy of a party which seeks to pride itself as a leading opposition but has done practically nothing to earn its stripes. It started with a horde of angry, internally displaced politicians overrunning the organs of a once-marginal party, the ADC in a spectacular act of a hostile take-over. Unfortunately, if the image presented by the party from the outside at the time was one of cohesion, it certainly did not help that the invaders neither possessed the patience nor the discipline to undertake the required due diligence! Now that it turns out that what they thought they had bought with pride was in every sense, a damaged good, Nigerians as a whole are being blackmailed, accused of being an accessory to their grand act of dereliction.
Yet, as the presidential candidate of the party in the 2023, general election, Dumebi Kachikwu, would care to remind, the takeover bid, being a flawed process is akin to erecting a castle on shifting sand. The tenure of the so-called chairman of the party, Ralph Nwosu, with whom the invaders negotiated, had long been rendered invalid by the effluxion of time. Not only that, the constitution of the party also made clear that those seeking the leadership of the party must have spent no less than two years in the party! These are supposed to be the issues before the courts!
Across the states, it is the same story of a party riven with crises from top to bottom. Yet, convinced that their good – as illegitimate as could be – was already theirs for keeps, the caretakers-turned undertakers plodded on, choosing to ignore the feelings of a section of the party hierarchs that needed to be placated. With just enough crude blackmail, impunity, cash and more cash in their armoury to waltz through, the conquistadors actually assumed they were unstoppable.
Of course, they pretended that the court processes are merely a side-show. The Federal High Court ruling which required the invaders to show cause why the prayers of the aggrieved ADC members should not be granted was thought of as a joke; the same way the judgment of the appellate court which directed the parties to return to status quo ante bellum was deemed by the ADC invaders a non-binding opinion hence their plans to proceed with a convention fraught with potential legal jeopardy.
To the invaders – Mark, Rauf Aregbesola et al, their interpretation, as against that of INEC with its tilt on neutrality – was sacrosanct.
While these drag on, trust the lawyers with their boring whining about how Section 83 of the Electoral Act, 2026 ousts the jurisdiction of the courts. Yes, it provides that “No court in Nigeria shall entertain jurisdiction over any suit or matter pertaining the internal affairs of a political party” as if that effectively translates to shutting the doors of mediation to aggrieved party men even on issues bordering on their rights or non-observance of party constitutions. In like manner, it is like the express provisions of Section 6(6)(b) which also provides that: “The judicial powers vested in accordance with the foregoing provisions of this section – shall extend to all matters between persons, or between government or authority and to any persons in Nigeria, and to all actions and proceedings relating thereto, for the determination of any question as to the civil rights and obligations of that person” has suddenly become superfluous in the current electoral cycle!
To return to the Amupitan matter: Should anyone be fooled by the orchestrated blackmail by those whose record private and public can’t hold a candle to Amupitan’s? Certainly not with what I had earlier described as a programmed de-legitimisation of the 2027 elections by overrated political actors being already an open book. Sure enough, the matter, in the coming days, would not be whether or not the gentleman from Kogi can take the heat, but how far those in the business of concocting lies would go to undermine the process simply because the odds are not going their way. While they are at it, they have still not told Nigerians how the lone individual – out of 37 odd Resident Electoral Commissioners (RECs) and 12 National Commissioners, with two representing each of the six geopolitical zones, has suddenly become the ultimate decider of how things will go in 2027.
Reminds of the bad workman perennially blaming his tools.
First published in The Nation on April 14, 2026
