Kenneth Okonkwo, the chieftain of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), has claimed that Joash Amupitan, the chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), is both careless and incompetent.
According to Naija News, Okonkwo made this statement in response to recent events involving the ADC national leadership’s derecognition.
Okonkwo criticized Amupitan in a long post on his social media account for claiming to be aware of the Court of Appeal’s ruling about its leadership through social media.
Okonkwo charged Amupitan with lying about the dates of the start of conflicts in ADC, emphasizing that this is an attempt to defend his unlawful and careless decision to give in to pressure from the All Progressives Congress (APC) to deregister ADC.
“After listening to Prof. Joash Ojo Amupitan, the INEC Chairman of Nigeria, on Arise TV, Morning Show, on March 3, 2026, at approximately 9:30 am, I have inevitably concluded that the INEC Chairman is not only the most incompetent INEC Chairman in Nigeria history, but he is an irresponsible dishonest person,” the post stated. Initially, I was taken aback by the inept Chairman’s statement that he discovered the Court of Appeal’s ruling via social media. INEC is a party to this litigation and has legal representation, however the head
of INEC learned about the ruling on social media. I wish he had mentioned main media at all. What an unimaginable degree of incapacity! This implies that instead of making choices based solely on legal grounds, we have a social media chairman who makes decisions based on comments on social media. It’s understandable why his choices are on par with those of some social media miscreants and street urchins whose primary goal is to get traffic to their blogs rather than making any sense in their scripts.
Second, according to Amupitan, the animosity within ADC started on July 29, 2025, when INEC officially recognized David Mark as the organization’s chairman. What? Amupitan, is this okay? On this day, the ADC NEC disbanded the ADC NWC and recognized David Mark’s NWC as its new leadership. On May 18, 2025, Nafiu Bala Gombe resigned his membership. On July 29, 2026, the ADC welcomed and recognized the new executive. INEC attended the NEC meeting and approved of the decision. Nafiu’s resignation was also announced to INEC, which accepted it. Nafiu did not file a lawsuit against the new executive.
The July 29th approval by NEC was when the new executive was born, not 9 September 2026, when INEC entered the names on its portal. The executive of ADC, led by David Mark, was born on July 29, 2025, not September 9, 2026, when INEC recognized it on its webpage. The animosity did not begin on July 29, 2025, but rather in September.
Remember that the Nafiu gang filed an exparte motion on September 2, 2026, but the trial court denied it. Since it was exparte at the time, ADC was not notified. No party was prevented from taking any action after this exparte motion was denied. Hostilities don’t start until a party is served in a matter and issues are joined. This happened after September 9, 2026. Therefore, status quo ante bellum dictates that the David Mark-led ADC should remain in place until the court makes a decision.
Therefore, when Amupitan claimed that hostilities began on July 29, 2025, when all parties, including INEC, were in agreement, he was blatantly lying. He just told this falsehood to defend his unlawful and careless decision to give in to APC pressure and deregister ADC.
INEC is not a court; it is an unpire. It even lacks the authority to provide its own interpretation on any issue before the court in the absence of an explicit court order. The Court of Appeal did not issue any directives to INEC. The idea that INEC will carry out its own made-up directives that the court never issued is absurd. The parties were instructed to maintain the status quo. INEC is unrelated to this. Joash, who was incompetent, acknowledged that INEC did not appear in court. What role does it have in interpreting the current situation? What it would have accomplished was to
stay impartial and permit any party requesting specific instructions aimed at INEC to ask the court for an interpretation. Amupitan is doing a hatchet job at INEC. This man need to be expelled right away. He is an assassin of democracy.
