THE Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Joash Amupitan, a senior advocate, has said Nigeria must end the culture of deciding election outcomes in courtrooms rather than at polling units.
Amupitan reportedly said this on Monday, October 27, at the 56th Annual National Conference of the Nigerian Association of Law Teachers (NALT), held at the University of Abuja.
Although the INEC boss stated that reducing election-related court cases might not please everyone, he insisted that restoring public confidence must take priority.
“We cannot continue to allow the courts to determine our elections. Elections must be won at the polling units, not in the courtroom,” he was quoted as saying.
Amupitan stressed that the trend of post- and pre-election litigations had become a burden on Nigeria’s democracy and must be addressed through reforms.
The INEC chairman, who was sworn in by President Bola Tinubu on October 23, 2025, decried what he described as “litigation by other means,” referencing the more than 1,000 pre-election cases filed ahead of the 2023 general elections.
He said genuine reform must begin with political parties, insisting that many of the litigations arose from the failure of parties to follow their constitutions and respect the Electoral Act and Nigerian Constitution.
“If political parties obey their constitutions, respect the Electoral Act, and align with the Nigerian Constitution, the avalanche of pre-election cases will collapse,” Amupitan said.
He explained that his goal waks to make electoral law “an instrument of change, not chaos,” adding that credible elections were possible when political actors embraced integrity.
He urged the National Assembly to strengthen existing electoral laws to enhance transparency and internal democracy within political parties, noting that restoring public trust in elections must take priority over political convenience.
His remarks came against a backdrop of repeated judicial involvement in determining winners of elections in Nigeria, with courts-based petitions having become a permanent feature of Nigeria’s electoral system, as highlighted by observers who reported that all seven presidential elections since 1999 ended up in the courts.
At his swearing-in on October 23, Tinubu, who was also affirmed the winner of the controversial 2023 presidential poll by the Supreme Court, urged Amupitan to safeguard the integrity of Nigeria’s elections and strengthen the institutional capacity of INEC.
“Our democracy has come a long way. In 25 years, we have consolidated and strengthened our democratic institutions, particularly our electoral system, through innovation and reforms. We have learned a great deal along the way and have improved significantly from where we were many years ago,” the president said.
He tasked the new chairman with ensuring that Nigeria’s electoral system remains “robust, resilient, and safeguarded against official setbacks,” while promoting free, fair, and credible elections.
The ICIR reported that during his Senate screening on October 16, Amupitan had also pledged to uphold INEC’s independence and conduct a comprehensive audit of the commission’s operations, particularly focusing on the logistical and technical failures recorded during the 2023 general elections.
He said the audit would help identify operational lapses and restore public trust in the electoral system.
Mustapha Usman is an investigative journalist with the International Centre for Investigative Reporting. You can easily reach him via: musman@icirnigeria.com. He tweets @UsmanMustapha_M