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Gbenga Sesan, the Executive Director of Paradigm HQ, has flagged flaws in the findings of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) from its probe into a pro-All Progressives Congress (APC) post allegedly linked to the INEC chairman, Joash Amupitan.
A pro-APC post reportedly shared in response to APC Youth Leader Dayo Israel’s 2023 post resurfaced in March 2026, prompting accusations of partisanship against Amupitan.
Israel, in the post, said he had “delivered” his polling unit and that the APC won 7 out of 10 polling units in a largely Igbo-dominated community where the party has never previously won, to which the account allegedly linked to Amupitan replied, “victory is sure.
INEC launched an investigation into the allegations and released a six-point report, arguing that the post was an attempt to discredit the commission and its chairman.
The findings claimed that the post linked to Amupitan was not made in 2023, as publicly claimed, and that it was not associated with INEC’s chairman.
Sesan, in a Facebook post shared on Monday, highlighted anomalies in INEC’s probe findings. He noted that one of the X accounts, @joashamupitan, was created in April and is verified, even though INEC officials have claimed it is an unofficial account. The digital rights advocate added that the electoral body could create multiple accounts with similar names, potentially obscuring the disputed account.
INEC also said that the pro-APC post allegedly linked to Amupitan did not appear on the Wayback Machine after it searched the archiving platform. The Paradigm HQ Executive Director explained that the Wayback Machine does not capture all online content.
“No web crawler captures everything, including tweets and their replies. I hope INEC has not paid the independent forensic expert who claims this crawler presents ‘definite proof of account fabrication’ in full, because s/he doesn’t deserve their balance,” Sesan said.
Sesan dismissed INEC’s claim that the post was not made in 2023, arguing that relying on the timestamp to invalidate the “victory is sure” reply is insufficient because Israel’s post was edited.
“It’s right there: ‘Last edited 4:18 pm on March 18, 2023’. If you say the reply was made 13 minutes before the tweet that was being replied to, how do you prove that the original tweet that was edited at 4:18 pm was not originally posted before 4:05 pm? ‘Cannot’ is not a word that an expert would use in this case,” Sesan added.
“UPDATE: The original tweet was posted at 4:02 pm (3 minutes before the “victory is sure” reply) as shown in the screenshot. I am also including screenshots of the edited tweet (posted at 4:18 pm) and edit history, which is publicly available on Twitter.”
Sesan also disputed INEC’s claim that it could not find the pro-APC post on X. He explained that post authors can hide replies, and anyone can edit a reply.
” If this were impersonation by someone who wishes to malign or implicate the INEC Chair, why would they delete the tweet? If the account was managed by the INEC Chair or his aides, would there be any motive to delete the reply in order to make this claim? You don’t need an “independent forensic expert” label to answer that question,” he questioned.
