INEC: How Nigeria's electoral umpire became a witness against itself
INEC SWORE AN OATH, THEN FORGOT WHAT IT SAID
How Nigeria’s electoral umpire became a witness against itself
There is something almost theatrical about watching an institution contradict its own sworn testimony. Not in private. Not in a quiet internal memo. But in open court, on record, under oath, before a Federal High Court judge in Abuja.
That is the position the Independent National Electoral Commission now occupies in the unfolding crisis within the African Democratic Congress. And the tragedy is that INEC did not stumble into this contradiction. It authored the document, paragraph by paragraph and exhibit by exhibit, which it voluntarily filed and signed.
INEC is one institution. Its chairmen come and go. But the commission, its powers, its obligations, and crucially its sworn testimony before courts of law remain. That is the first thing to understand. The second is the affidavit.
On the 10th of September 2025, INEC filed a formal affidavit in Suit No. FHC/ABJ/CS/1819/2025, a matter before the Federal High Court, Abuja Judicial Division, in which Hon. Nafiu Bala Gombe had sued the ADC, Senator David Mark, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, INEC, and Chief Ralph Nwosu. The affidavit was deposed to by Jacob Ayuba, an Assistant Executive Officer in INEC’s employ, who declared that he had the authority and consent of the commission to make the deposition.
That commission was then chaired by Professor Mahmood Yakubu. It is now chaired by Professor Amupitan. The nameplate on the chairman’s door has changed. The institution has not.
In that affidavit, INEC did not hedge. It did not equivocate. It stated, as established fact, that on the 4th of July 2025, it received formal written notice from the ADC of the party’s intention to hold its National Executive Committee meeting on the 29th of July 2025. It stated that the venue was Chelsea Hotel at Central Business District, Abuja. It stated that it deployed officials to attend and monitor that meeting.
It stated that those officials were present and submitted a written monitoring report to INEC headquarters in Maitama. That report, it said, was attached as Exhibit INEC 2.
Then came the most consequential paragraph in the affidavit. INEC swore that, pursuant to that monitoring report, it effected the changes of the ADC’s national leadership in its records and recognised Senator David Mark as National Chairman and Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola as National Secretary of the party.
It further swore that it uploaded the names of all national officers of the ADC on its website, attaching that upload as Exhibit INEC 3.
INEC SWORE AN OATH, THEN FORGOT WHAT IT SAID
INEC attended the meeting. INEC wrote the report. INEC granted the recognition. INEC uploaded the names. Every step Nafiu Bala sought to reverse was taken by INEC itself.
INEC did not stop at narrating what it had done. It went further to defend it. It told the court that granting the injunction sought by Nafiu Bala would amount to prejudging the substantive issues at an interlocutory stage. It argued that the acts the plaintiff sought to restrain had already been completed and that an injunction cannot lie to stop a completed act.
It cited the Supreme Court in APC v. Moses (2021) and Jegede v. INEC (2021) as binding authority. It told the court that jurisdiction in party affairs is limited to complaints about the conduct of primaries, and that Nafiu Bala’s grievances related solely to internal party processes beyond judicial reach.
In plain language, INEC told a Federal High Court: we attended the NEC meeting, we monitored it, we recognised the outcome, we published the results, everything was done lawfully, and this court has no business disturbing any of it.
That was INEC in September 2025. Then came the 31st of March 2026.
Acting on the Amupitan judgment, INEC delisted Senator David Mark and Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola from its portal. The same names it had sworn it legitimately recognised following its own first-hand monitoring of a duly convened NEC meeting. The same names it had uploaded and exhibited before a court of law.
The same recognition it had characterised, in a sworn affidavit, as a completed act beyond the reach of injunctive interference. Six months separated the oath from the erasure. Not a decade. Not a generation. Six months.
One institution. One unbroken legal identity. One sworn affidavit in September 2025. One portal update in March 2026. The contradiction belongs entirely to INEC and INEC alone.
This is not a bureaucratic inconvenience. This is an institutional crisis of credibility. An affidavit is not an opinion column. It is not a press briefing subject to correction when the political weather changes or when a new chairman assumes office.
An affidavit is a sworn statement of fact, made on oath before a court of law, carrying legal consequences for falsehood. When INEC deposed that it recognised David Mark and Aregbesola on the basis of a monitored NEC meeting, it was not speaking casually. It was speaking legally, formally, and bindingly on behalf of the commission as a continuing constitutional institution.
That oath does not expire with any chairman’s tenure. A company does not escape the terms of a contract simply because it hired a new chief executive. A government agency does not disown its own court filings simply because its leadership changed. INEC is bound by what INEC swore.
To delist those same officers on the 31st of March 2026 is to place the commission in a position where one of two things must be true: either the affidavit filed in September 2025 contained false statements of fact, or the delisting is inconsistent with the commission’s own prior lawful conduct. Neither option is comfortable. Both are constitutionally significant.
There is a doctrine that Nigerian courts have applied consistently: a party cannot approbate and reprobate. You cannot accept the benefits of a legal position while simultaneously disowning its obligations.
INEC swore that it recognised the David Mark NWC on lawful grounds. INEC cannot, through the administrative convenience of a portal update, behave as though that oath was a rough draft that lapsed when Professor Mahmood Yakubu handed over to Professor Amupitan. Institutional oaths do not work that way. Constitutional bodies do not work that way.
The Amupitan judgment and Justice Nwite’s order operate within their own jurisdictional sphere. But they do not reach backwards and nullify sworn testimony already filed in a separate suit before a coordinate court.
What they have done, in combination with INEC’s compliance, is create a direct and unresolved evidentiary conflict within the commission’s own court record. That conflict will not dissolve quietly. It will surface in cross-examination, in applications, and in judgments yet to be written. INEC will have to answer for it in court, whoever is sitting in the chairman’s seat when that day arrives.
Beyond the ADC’s internal contest, what is at stake here is something larger. Nigeria’s electoral management body derives its authority, ultimately, from the trust that citizens and institutions place in its consistency and impartiality.
A commission whose sworn positions shift with changes in leadership is not an umpire. It is a weather vane. And a democracy cannot be built on a weather vane.
The David Mark NWC was not recognised by ADC alone. It was recognised by INEC, based on INEC’s own monitoring, INEC’s own report, and INEC’s own upload. That recognition was then defended in open court, with exhibits, under oath, as the settled and completed act of a constitutional institution.
That testimony does not disappear because a portal was cleared on the 31st of March 2026. It sits in the court record. It carries INEC’s name. It is INEC’s word.
There is only one credible path forward: INEC must withdraw the delisting and restore what its own oath established.
An institution that contradicts its own sworn court testimony through an administrative portal update has not merely made an error. It has made a statement about the value it places on its own word before a court of law.
INEC’s affidavit of September 2025 is not a historical curiosity. It is live court evidence in an ongoing suit. It is the commission’s own testimony. And it says, without ambiguity, that Senator David Mark and Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola are the legitimate national officers of the African Democratic Congress.
INEC swore an oath. The institution endures. The oath endures with it.
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B Director General The Narrative Force
Written By: Chigbo Ogu (Obinwannem News correspondent, Enugu State) Date: April 9, 2026 Ubochi Nkwo Ikuku Published by Mazi Ugwu Okechukwu (Director Obinwannem Media)
