Joash Amupitan: Digital impersonation as a political weapon
By Richard Elesho
These, as they say, are unusual times in Nigeria. Politics is in the air, and the actors are devising means both straight and crooked to gain advantage. After all, all is fair that seem fair in the game of power. Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the one whose turn it was to mount the saddle as Nigeria’s president according to his famous “Emi lokan” diatribe of 2022, is in the last lap of his first tenure.
The nation is shopping for his replacement or reelection, as the case may be. This civic exercise is coming simultaneously along with the election of national and state assembly members in all 774 local governments. In addition, governorship elections will be conducted in 28 out of 36 states of the Federation. Kogi leads the pack of the remaining eight states where off cycle governorship polls are conducted due to judicial pronouncements on previous exercises in those states.
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Of course, the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, remains an ubiquitous umpire in all the polls, in which no less than 80 million Nigerians have registered to vote. As the nation wobbles towards the January/ February 2027 dateline, all eyes are on the apex electoral arbiter as it goes about the herculean and quiet, complex duty of organising the utopian free and fair election. INEC and its leadership have come under the gaze of binocular lenses scanning for evidence of bias in its actions.
An example. Not a few people have made a mince meat of the newly appointed INEC Chairman Prof Joash Ojo Amupitan because of apparent moves to derecognise the African Democratic Congress, ADC citing leadership crisis in the party. As the matter and similar ones within other opposition political parties, notably the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP and Labour Party, LP, are before the Supreme Court, the highest temple of justice in the land, I will refrain from further comments to stave off the charge of judicial prejudice. What is more worrisome is the recent link of Amupitan’s name with a clearly partisan line using digital tools.
Indeed, in an era where perception often travels faster than truth, the emerging pattern of digital impersonation as a political tool should alarm anyone who values institutional credibility.
The recent attempt to smear the integrity of Amupitan is a textbook example of how misinformation is being weaponized to erode public trust.
Details of the contrivance will make Amupitan’s prototype in the Hebrew Scripture, Joash, the Abiezrite, whose son, Gideon dismantled the alter of Baal, squinch in the sepulchre (Judges 6)
At the centre of this campaign is a fabricated social media narrative. Hirelings suspected to be linked to opposition interests allegedly created a fake Twitter (X) account in the chairman’s name—despite the fact that he does not operate any such account. Through this impersonation, they circulated a claim that he responded “Victory is sure” to a post by @dayo isteal in 2023, implying partisan alignment with President Tinubu.
But even a cursory look at the details exposes the deception. A quick check.
The supposed reply is timestamped 13 minutes before the original post it was responding to—an obvious impossibility that underscores the contrived nature of the claim. The original post with ID: 1637111200159879170 by @dayoosrael was published at 4.18pm Nigerian time, while what was supposed to be a reply to it allegedly by Amupitan was posted at 4.05pm which carried the automatic timestamp on all X posts Meaning that a reply post came 13 minutes earlier than the original post it was responding to. This is not just sloppy propaganda; it is a deliberate attempt to manipulate public opinion through digital forgery.
Such tactics are dangerous. They shift political contestation away from ideas and performance into the murky territory of character assassination. More importantly, they target the credibility of electoral institutions—pillars that must remain above partisan battles if democracy is to function.
If left unchecked, this trend risks normalizing a culture where anyone can be digitally cloned, misrepresented, and discredited with little consequence. The real casualty, beyond any individual, is public trust.
The Independent National Electoral Commission has18pm met the standard threshold for trust building and institutional integrity by commissioning an independent forensic investigation to unravel the identity of the creator of the phantom X account. Happily, the findings of the investigation revealed the INEC boss does not have and has never had an X account after investigators queried the internet archive’s data, Way back machine’s screenshots of public X profiles and posts with no single archived record seen.. No linkage was also established between the fake X account and Prof. Amupitan’s phone number, yahoo address, and account number which the impersonator tried desperately in vain to link through the X account and password recovery reset.
Fearing they had been found out, the impersonators quickly renamed the X handle to @sunnyvibe00 on April 10, 2026, the day the screenshot of the fake post went viral. The account was also set to “private” and labelled parody account. The current occupant of the account, Coy Emerald, who legitimately reclaimed his account, has disclaimed any affiliation with the original account or it’s prior user.
INEC should submit report of the forensic investigation to the security forces for further action and diligent investigation to uncover the impersonators and bring them to justice. This is the way to go as a deterrent measure against digital impersonation and forgery. Any thing less will amount to treating criminality with kid gloves.
Political actors and their agents must recognize that undermining electoral leadership through disinformation may yield short-term gains, but it weakens the very system that guarantees democratic legitimacy. And for citizens, the lesson is clear: skepticism must be applied not just to official narratives, but to viral outrage as well.
Truth, in today’s information ecosystem, needs vigilance. For the protection of our democratic space, all hands must be on deck. The time to start is now.
*Richard Olaniran Elesho is the North Central Bureau Chief of “The News”*
(DEMOCRACY NEWSLINE NEWSPAPER, APRIL 23RD 2026)
