You Can’t Lecture INEC Chair, Presidency Fires Back at ADC Leaders

The Presidency has defended the Chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Joash Amupitan, following calls by the African Democratic Congress (ADC) for his resignation over the party’s internal leadership crisis.

President Bola Tinubu’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, Temitope Ajayi, said the ADC’s interim National Chairman, David Mark, National Secretary, Rauf Aregbesola, and the party’s spokesman, Bolaji Abdullahi, were in no position to lecture Amupitan on his responsibilities.

Ajayi said the INEC chairman has reached the peak of his academic and professional career, describing him as a legal scholar and Senior Advocate of Nigeria who fully understands the implications of the legal principle “status quo ante bellum.”

His remarks followed a press conference in Abuja on Thursday where Mark and other ADC chieftains accused Amupitan of failing in his duties and demanded his resignation.

Mark had also urged President Tinubu to remove the INEC chairman, insisting that he had shown he was incapable of conducting credible elections in the country.

Responding in a post on X, Ajayi dismissed the ADC’s position and said the party was wrongly dragging Amupitan, Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress (APC) into what he described as its self-inflicted internal crisis.

“We all can at least agree that the INEC chairman is at the top of his career academically and professionally – a teacher of law, Professor of law and a Senior Advocate of Nigeria,” Ajayi wrote.

“What this means is he sure knows what ‘status quo ante bellum’ means.

“Senator David Mark, Mr Peter Obi, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola and Mr Bolaji Abdullahi, certainly, can’t teach him what that latin legal maxim means.

“It is bad politics for ADC people to make their own internal crisis of choice a problem of Professor Amupitan, that of President Tinubu and APC.”