INEC Chairman Prof Joash Amupitan
The Northern Ethnic Youth Group Assembly (NEYGA) has condemned Friday’s demonstration by what it described as “a small rented crowd” against chairman of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Prof. Joash Amupitan, outside Chatham House in London.
The group alleged that the “handful of persons” were sponsored by aggrieved politicians and contractors bent on sabotaging the upcoming general elections.
In a press statement issued in Kaduna and signed by its spokesperson, Mallam Ibrahim Dan-Musa, NEYGA asserted that “the calls for Prof. Amupitan’s resignation are a calculated distraction orchestrated by individuals who fear that an impending court judgment will ruin their political fortunes.”
The group also stated that some contractors who insist on monopolizing the supply of electoral materials, also co-sponsored the London protest.
According to the statement , “credible intelligence sources by NEYGA indicated that the London demonstration was a staged, well-funded affair populated largely by non-Nigerians—including nationals from Zimbabwe and South Africa—hired to create an illusion of widespread diaspora outrage.”
Continued the group, “it is both ironic and curious that these same rented voices maintained a deafening silence when Nigerians and other Africans were being killed and their properties destroyed during the recent xenophobic attacks in South Africa.
“We expected these self-styled activists to take those cases to the international community. Yet, they disappointedly failed to act. Sadly , they have allowed themselves to be weaponized against Nigeria’s democratic process,” stated the group.
NEYGA emphasized that “the purported grievances cited by the protester, specifically complaints regarding suspected AI-generated photographs in the preliminary voters’ register, were already raised domestically and are being actively addressed by the Commission.”
NEYGA noted that INEC has demonstrated transparency by giving Nigerians daily updates on its preparations and has already deleted over 1.6 million invalid voter registrations in its ongoing register cleanup ahead of the final certification.
Sounding a note of warning, NEYGA declared that it has uncovered the identities of the contractors financing the foreign protests and is currently compiling their names for a formal petition to relevant security and anti-corruption authorities. The group promised to “expose and publicly shame them in due course.”
“To those INEC contractors: you cannot hold the Commission hostage. Colluding with desperate politicians to sabotage Nigeria’s democratic processes is not merely a crime—it is a grave felony, and your activities are being closely monitored,” warned NEYGA.
The group urged Nigerians across all divides to rally behind Prof. Amupitan, NEYGA, notinh that the INEC Chairman has done nothing wrong to warrant questions about his capacity. The group also stressed that the ongoing early distribution of non-sensitive electoral materials from the national headquarters to the states is unprecedented.
“We call on the INEC Chairman not to be deterred by paid blackmailers. He must remain focused on his mandate to deliver free, fair, and credible elections to the Nigerian people,” the group declared.
