New INEC Chairman Joash Amupitan Pledges Comprehensive Audit of IReV to Restore Electoral Credibility

The newly confirmed Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Professor Joash Amupitan, has initiated his tenure with a strong pledge to confront the technological issues that severely damaged public trust in the country’s electoral process. Speaking during his screening before the Senate, Professor Amupitan committed to conducting a comprehensive audit of the INEC Results Viewing (IReV) portal to identify and permanently resolve the technical glitches that marred the 2023 general elections.

The incoming INEC boss noted that while technologies like the IReV and the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) were introduced to enhance transparency and integrity, the widespread failures during the last election were “subsumed as a glitch.” He explained the legal context, clarifying that the Supreme Court ultimately ruled that the IReV portal was intended as a verification tool to ensure consistency with manually collated results, and not as the primary electronic collation system. Professor Amupitan stated that his administration must scrutinize the IReV system to determine the root causes of the 2023 failures and evaluate the capability of existing technology to meet the nation’s electoral needs, emphasizing that success requires collaborative efforts from external agencies like the NCC, NIMC, and service providers.

Beyond technological fixes, Professor Amupitan assured lawmakers that he plans to undertake a broader audit of INEC’s operational and constitutional framework. He specifically highlighted that delayed release of election funds, often mandated to be disbursed a year before polls but frequently delayed, has historically constrained the commission’s financial capacity and institutional efficiency. The new chairman, who replaces Professor Mahmood Yakubu, stressed his intent to uphold the commission’s autonomy and work in tandem with the National Assembly on electoral reforms that will guarantee genuinely free, fair, and credible elections for all Nigerians.