By Tunde Olusunle, PhD
Fellow, Association of Nigerian Authors, (FANA)
That the name Joash Ojo Amupitan has dominated the headlines in the past few weeks is saying the very obvious. The erudite Professor of Law and Senior Advocate of Nigeria, (SAN), has been in the eye of the storm since the organisation he chairs, the Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC), de-recognised the leadership of the African Democratic Congress, (ADC), April 2, 2026, Amupitan has become perhaps the most detested public officer by a section of the polity. INEC predicated it’s action on a subsisting suit which it averred was yet to adjudicate in the contestation for the authentic leadership of the ADC between an extant faction led by Nafiu Bala Gombe, and the substantive chairmanship of Senator David Mark.
This ran counter to the September 10, 2025 recognition of the very same David Mark and Rauf Aregbesola leadership of the ADC as uploaded on the Commission’s website on the same day, when INEC was superintended by Prof Mamood Yakubu. Despite every effort to scuttle the national convention it had planned for Tuesday April 14, 2026, which bore every imprimatur of the state, the dominant David Mark faction of the ADC, rallied to a successful event within the grounds of an events centre in Abuja, with over 3000 delegates in attendance. The Nafiu Bala Gombe splinter group, however, posted staring emptiness at its version scheduled for the expansive Moshood Abiola National Stadium, Abuja, exactly a week later on Tuesday April 21, 2026.
Given the boiling-point intensity of the national political temperature, just about eight months to the general elections, Amupitan being an appointee of the incumbent administration of President Bola Tinubu, has been fingered as a dispassionate umpire. He has been roundly abused, accused, vilified and vituperated as having been specifically procured to provide seamless and soft, sofa-landing for Tinubu in the January 16, 2027 presidential election. This comes as the ADC builds up into a robust coalition of some of Nigeria’s most influential politicians who appeal to different zones, sub-zones, tendencies and persuasions, poised to challenge the ruling All Progressives Congress, (APC), in the forthcoming general polls scheduled for January and February 2027, respectively. That Amupitan bears sociocultural affinity to the President in our intrinsically ethnoreligiously suspicious society, has complicated widespread distrust.
Whereas the President sounds ultra-confident about the chances of his reelection, the actions and pronouncements of his lieutenants suggest tangible apprehension. While addressing a grouping of his supporters last week, Tinubu said loud and clear, that there was no scaring him, the Jagaban, from seeking a second mandate. Tinubu was turbanned Jagaban, which translates as “leader of warriors,” back in February 2006, by the erstwhile Emir of Borgu, Niger State, Alhaji Haliru Dantoro. Both men served in Nigeria’s Third Republic Senate between 1992 and 1993 and that honour was to cement their longstanding friendship and Tinubu’s political ascendancy. Jagaban ranks parri passu in public reference to Tinubu with his earlier title of Asiwaju, which means “leader” or “frontliner” with which he was invested by the former Oba of Lagos, Kabiyesi Adeyinka Oyekan II, back in 1992.
Tinubu’s men have been fingered in the decimation of opposition parties as part of a grand strategy to weaken every opposition to his reelection quest in the coming months. His Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, last weekend publicly admonished Leke Abejide, Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Customs and Excise, to remain in ADC to “fight them, scatter them, we like what you’re doing,” in reference to the mainstream David Mark ADC. Nyesom Wike, who worked against the presidential candidate of Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP), at the 2023 presidential election, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and was overlooked as his running mate, is Tinubu’s Minister for the Federal Capital Territory, (FCT). His complicity in the discombobulation of the primordial PDP is public knowledge. Herein lies the trust deficit in Amupitan and INEC by the public, a perception which has instigated protests at home and abroad.
I feel competent to write about the Professor Joash Ojo Amupitan, SAN, who I’ve known for over 10 years now and who may actually be a victim of the very precocious office he presently holds. Thursday December 26, 2013, former Health Minister during the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo, Professor Eyitayo Lambo constituted a think-tank of academics, technocrats and professionals from the Yoruba-speaking Okun country in Kogi State. The inaugural meeting was held in Lambo’s country home in Isanlu, headquarters of Yagba East council area of Kogi State. It included Emeritus Professor Olu Obafemi, recipient of the 2018 Nigerian National Order of Merit award, (NNOM); former Attorney-General and Minister for Justice, Chief Bayo Ojo, SAN, CON; Pastor John Baiyeshea, SAN, and former General Officer Commanding (GOC), Third Armoured Division of the Nigerian Army, Major-General Julius Oshanupin.
There were also former Commander, Technical Training Group, (TTG), of the Nigerian Airforce, Air Vice Marshal Kunle Awarun; Brigadier-General Abiodun Ayo; former Assistant Director-General of the Department of State Services, (DSS), Dr Toyin Akanle; former university scholar and frontline Okun-Afenifere leader, Dr David Atte; energy expert, Engr Dan Kunle; former Health Commissioner in Kogi State, Dr Stephen Olorunfemi; former Director in the National Inland Waterways Authority, (NIWA), Lokoja, Dr Femi Ajisafe and former Director in the Federal Capital Territory Administration, (FCTA), Dr Ronke Bello. Former Chairman of the Kogi State All Farmers Association of Nigeria, (AFAN), Dr Tunde Arosanyin; former Director in the Tertiary Education Trust Fund, (TETFUND), Chief Femi Melefa, and former General Manager, Public Affairs, Federal Housing Authority, (FHA) Chief Tunde Ipinmisho, and a former Director in the National Health Insurance Scheme, (NHIS), Pastor Laja Abereoran, were equally members of the group.
Departed members of the OTT include Emeritus Professor of Economics and former President of the Nigerian Economic Society, (NES), Prof Olufemi Kayode; Emeritus President of the Okun Development Association, (ODA), Ambassador Babatunde Paul Fadumiyo and Emeritus Professor of Pathology, Albert Sunday Anjorin. There were also former Director-General of the Public Service Institute, (PSI), Dr Abdulganiyu Obatoyinbo; renowned development economist, Chief Samuel Kunle Adedoyin and former Rector of the Kogi State Polytechnic, Prof Idowu Ajibero, all of blessed memory. Such was the solidity of the membership of the Okun Think Tank, (OTT), who rank among the best species of elite humanity anywhere in the world. By and large, they were expected to be apolitical.
Being largely resident in Abuja, Prof Lambo called meetings of the group in the capital city, to discuss issues of concern to the Okun nation, in relation to Kogi State and Nigeria at large. Cognisant of the fact that many members were resident outside Abuja and desirous of quality, broad-based perspectives from distinguished Okun nationals, the OTT enjoined Prof Amupitan to join the body from his base in Jos, Plateau State. Irrespective of the brevity of notice, Amupitan always found a way to attend and actively participate in our meetings.
It was always such a delight to listen to legal exchanges between arguably three of Nigeria’s finest legal luminaries and Senior Advocates of Nigeria, (SANs), Ojo, Baiyeshea and Amupitan, or intellectual exchanges between Kayode, Anjorin, Lambo, Obafemi, Akanle and Prof Mike Ikupolati, during OTT’s typically seminal converges. The OTT was very proactive and notably engaged with former President Goodluck Jonathan on the matter of the absence of a federal university in Okunland, despite the immense contributions of people from the area to literacy and national development. This subsequently berthed the Federal University Lokoja, (FUL), which has continued to grow in leaps and bounds.
I was on the OTT delegation led by Prof Eyitayo Lambo which graced Amupitan’s conferment with the rank of Senior Advocate of Nigeria, (SAN), in September 2014. That a preeminent elder and statesman like Lambo considered Amupitan’s investiture worthy of his physical participation speaks volumes about the quality of the man. November 25, 2022, I was compere, with Yemi Olumudi-Gold, a brilliant woman attorney, at the public presentation of Nurtured by Grace and Rectitude: Biography of Justice John Afolabi Fabiyi, JSC, CFR, written by Kole Adedoyin and Rufus Aiyenigba. Amupitan did the book review which I described in a November 30, 2022 essay as “profound and rigorous, incisive and insightful, exhaustive, yet engaging performance-style review which could potentially for an inaugural lecture.”
It was a humongous 9000-word treatise which nonetheless held the audience in rapt attention, even as language enthusiasts like me, ingested new expressions. How was I to know that “Justice Fabiyi’s ratio descedendi in several landmark cases, remain locus classicus in Nigerian courts, several years after his retirement,” but for Amupitan? Prof Amupitan and I met at one of our OTT meetings hosted by Major-General Oshanupin two years ago, when he was Deputy Vice-Chancellor at the University of Jos. He walked up to me and we greeted. “My brother, e’mokun,” as we say back home. “I need to commend your capacity for hard work, and your consummate love for our people. Your courage, your commitment, the profundity of your work, your consistency as a scholar-writer, deserve genuine acknowledgement. And congratulations on the two books you recently published and launched. We will support your industry and contributions to knowledge.”
I found it amusing that Amupitan’s biological age was an object of contestation before his eventual confirmation by the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, October 16, 2025. The rucus was about the fact that his curriculum vitae says he graduated in 1987, when he was 20. Well, I graduated two years before him at 20 myself. While I thought I was probably the youngest in my class, I was, last January, invited to the birthdays of the true youngest duo in my class, one of them a lady and distinguished Professor of African, Caribbean and African-American Literature. Apparently both of them were 19 in our graduating class of 1985. Even if I took my latter day formal education in my stride, I had dusted my masters (with credit), at age 24. It was therefore laughable that the matter of Amupitan’s age was elevated to the pedestal of national discourse.
Amupitan’s former students attest to his rigour, exhaustiveness and thoroughness as a researcher, teacher and assessor. Their views are echoed by Amupitan’s colleagues and associates who have known him through several decades. They tell you there are no middle courses, no short cuts with him. He’s not one of those who have desecrated the primordial sanctity of the academia or who seek gratification of any kind from their wards. Call him efiko, as we say in Nigerian parlance, or “old school” and it will be consistent with the DNA of his origins. I have been mentored and taught by Amupitan’s kinsmen, our elders in the vocation of intellection. These include Professors Obafemi, Anjorin and Ade Mobain Obayemi, not forgetting Pastor Emmanuel Oset and Dapo Olorunyomi. I know how deeply they prize integrity and virtue.
When Amupitan promised us upon his inauguration that he intends to lead an INEC which will conduct the kind of elections which will be decided at the ballot, not the courtroom, I prayed Nigerians to believe him. When he said we should be able to hold elections in which winners and losers will shake hands and embrace themselves after the contest, I hoped he would be given a chance. He has his job cut out. But the Amupitan I know, guards his hard-earned reputation very jealously. He has a date with history.
– Tunde Olusunle, PhD, Fellow of the Association of Nigerian Authors, (FANA), teaches Creative Writing at the University of Abuja
