ABUJA: The Unbiased Nationwide Electoral Fee, INEC, has declared {that a} forensic cybersecurity investigation has conclusively established that its Chairman, Prof. Joash Ojo Amupitan, SAN, doesn’t personal or function any account on X, previously often called Twitter.
It additionally stated viral social media posts attributed to him have been digitally fabricated, as a part of a coordinated disinformation marketing campaign.
The fee disclosed this in an announcement by the Chief Press Secretary and Media Adviser to the Chairman, Mr Adedayo Oketola, in Abuja yesterday, following weeks of circulating screenshots that purported to point out Amupitan making a partisan political put up on the platform.
In line with the assertion, the difficulty started on April 10, 2026, when Prof. Amupitan’s consideration was drawn to posts and screenshots on social media claiming he operated an X account below the deal with @joashamupitan and had posted the phrase “Victory is certain” in reply to a different person, @dayoisreal.
The screenshots unfold quickly throughout each conventional and on-line media, with accompanying data of emails, cellphone numbers, OPay and BVN verification information and alleged information breach information offered as corroborating proof linking the INEC boss to the account.
INEC responded by commissioning an impartial forensic cybersecurity skilled, who performed a multi-layered investigation utilizing X platform information, web archive data, OSINT instruments, identification forensics and cross-platform evaluation. The findings have been unequivocal, he stated.
“The forensic proof is complete, multi-sourced, and unambiguous. The posts attributed to Prof. Amupitan on X are fabricated. The account is a transparent case of impersonation, and the encircling exercise factors to a coordinated disinformation effort meant to control public notion”, Oketola stated.
Among the many most hanging items of forensic proof was a timestamp anomaly that investigators described because the definitive proof of fabrication.
The viral screenshots confirmed the alleged “Victory is certain” reply from @joashamupitan timestamped at 4:05 PM, but forensic verification of the unique put up by @dayoisreal confirmed it was printed at 4:18 PM Nigerian time — 13 minutes later.
The fee acknowledged that the alleged reply had subsequently been timestamped 13 minutes earlier than the unique put up existed, a technical impossibility on any digital platform.
“No platform can obtain a reply earlier than the unique put up is printed,” the assertion famous, including that the discrepancy “shouldn’t be a minor inconsistency or time zone error” however proof that the screenshot was digitally edited or fabricated, probably utilizing Synthetic Intelligence.
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He stated additional forensic checks on the Web Archive’s Wayback Machine returned zero data of the @joashamupitan account earlier than April 10, 2026.
In line with him, no archived profile, no archived posts, and no hint of any account exercise existed previous to the day the screenshots went viral.
He stated reside platform verification equally confirmed that the alleged “Victory is certain” reply is absent from the lively thread of @dayoisreal, and exhaustive X platform searches for the phrase from the disputed account returned no outcomes by any means.
Investigators additionally famous a telling sequence of occasions on April 10: on the identical day the screenshots exploded on-line, the @joashamupitan account was swiftly renamed to @sundayvibe00, set to personal, and retroactively labelled a “Parody Account.”
The fee described this as “a damage-control tactic by an impersonator searching for to eradicate a digital path,” including that the self-applied parody label “constituted an implicit admission that the account was by no means Prof. Amupitan’s real private account.”
In line with the assertion, makes an attempt to hyperlink the disputed account to Prof. Amupitan’s identified electronic mail tackle, [email protected], and an related cellphone quantity by means of X’s official account restoration and password reset flows additionally failed fully.
On the BVN and OPay information used to buttress the disinformation, the fee dismissed the inference as “a logical fallacy, not forensic proof,” stating {that a} cellphone quantity showing in a BVN report couldn’t be used to ascertain social media account possession.
The investigation additional uncovered a broader sample of multi-platform impersonation. No less than seven faux Fb and Instagram accounts utilizing Prof. Amupitan’s title and profile pictures have been recognized, some relationship again so far as 2018, years earlier than his October 2025 appointment as INEC chairman, with a number of displaying suspicious current modifications.
One of many impartial investigators characterised your entire operation as “a coordinated digital impersonation and disinformation marketing campaign.”
The fee has since referred the forensic report back to legislation enforcement businesses, calling for the swift identification and prosecution of these accountable below Nigeria’s Cybercrimes (Prohibition, Prevention, and so forth.) Act, which criminalises identification theft, digital forgery and the dissemination of manipulated digital content material.