The Executive Director of Paradigm Initiative, Gbenga Sesan, has picked holes and doubts in the forensic investigation result of INEC Chairman Joash Amupitan by the Independent National Electoral Commission to counter claims of partisan politics levelled against the INEC Chairman via his X (formerly Twitter) handle.
Recall that ENigeria Newspaper reported that the commission defended a viral social media post that was falsely attributed to its Chairman, Prof. Joash Ojo Amupitan. The commission affirmed that the allegations were not true after it had done a thorough forensic investigation.
However, analyst Gbenga Sesan, who is also an IT professional, has faulted the forensic analysis done by the the commission, stressing that the commission had only come up with impossible defense claims. He, ultimately, alleged that the commission lied with the forensis.
In his analyst, Gbenga Sesan outlined six faults in the forensic investigation done by the commission. In a Facebook post, the analyst showed how the forensis contradicted and could not be trusted with its supposed results.
In Point One (1), the analyst pointed out that, “the person who now uses the Twitter account they call “a verified cybersecurity researcher” is an APC supporter. Coy Emerald, whose full name is shortened to O.Y.O., has been employed by the Nigeria Police Force and the National IT Agency and is associated with a particular “Jagaban Army.”
The analyst pointed that the while the “independent investigation” claims that the renaming and parody pattern is an impersonator’s damage control strategy, it might be an insider job by somebody who would purposefully muddle the waters.
The Point Two (2) that the analyst showed that one attempts to link an email or phone number with the disputed account as INEC forensis as shown, the newly related email will appear since additional accounts have been created using the same login.
In Point Three (3), the analyst wrote, “the Wayback Machine does not capture everything. 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 a “definite proof of account fabrication” in full because s/he doesn’t deserve her/his balance.”
The above faults the use of the Wayback Machine, claiming with the tool saves snapshots of web pages over time but cannot use the Wayback Machine as “definite proof” that an account or post never existed.
In Point Four (4), Sesan argued that the “Victory is sure” reply must be fake because it appeared before the original tweet is flawed, since the tweet was later edited, making it impossible to conclusively determine that the reply came before the original post.
“The attempt at using a timestamp to invalidate the “victory is sure” reply falls flat on its face because the tweet by @dayoisrael was EDITED! It’s right there: “Last edited 4:18 PM · Mar 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 4:18pm was not originally posted before 4:05pm? “Cannot” is not a word that an expert would use in this case”, he wrote.
The last observation (Point Five, 5) by the analyst added that because replies can be concealed by the original poster or removed by the person who posted them, the argument that the “Victory is sure” reply never existed simply because it cannot be located on Twitter is flimsy.
He wrote, “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.”
The analyst concluded that the commission’s attempt to silence legitimate questions and invalidate sincere concerns is extremely concerning, given the history of Nigerian elections and the extent of gaslighting that citizens have experienced at the hands of those who appointed the current INEC Chair.
INEC Chairman alleged old tweets
Two weeks ago, a netizen on X dug out a response attributed to Joash Amupitan. The tweet, written as ‘Victory is sure’ was a response to a tweet by popular APC Chieftain Dayo Isreal who boasted that he had flipped his “nearby,” “Igbo-dominated” polling unit from the opposition to the APC.
Other tweets of his were dug out. On March 17, 2023, a day earlier, one Okodoro Oro debunked a rumour that supporters of Peter Obi had used an outdated photo of a bleeding man to disparage legislator Desmond Elliot of Lagos State.
“They are evil in the 24th [sic] century,” was Amupitan’s reply.
A Tinubu supporter account commemorated Tinubu’s arrival at the Abuja airport in April of 2025. “Asiwaju” was Amupitan’s one-word response to the tweet.
As soon as the all of these tweets went viral, a none-yet-to-be-indentified handler of the X account named @joashamupitan quickly deactivated the account and renamed it to @Sundayvibe002.
Since then, protests have been staged, asking for the removal of the INEC Chairman.
