ABUJA — The Supreme Council for Shari’ah in Nigeria (SCSN) has officially declared that it will not recognize any election conducted under the current INEC Chairman, Prof. Joash Ojo Amupitan, plunging the nation’s electoral body into a total legitimacy crisis.
In a sweeping directive issued Friday, the Council ordered all imams to use their pulpits to preach for Amupitan’s immediate removal. The group’s spokesman, Prof. Sheikh Bashir Aliyu, was blunt: the Muslim Ummah will view any election organized by Amupitan as illegitimate and a direct affront to the neutrality of the office.
This ultimatum centers on a 2020 legal brief authored by Amupitan, which the Council describes as a “bigoted” manifesto. In the document, Amupitan allegedly framed northern violence as a religious jihad and claimed a “Christian genocide” was in progress—views the SCSN says prove he is fundamentally biased against the North and the Muslim faith.
The firestorm intensified this week after investigators reportedly tracked a controversial digital account back to an email address—amupitanj@yahoo.com—found directly on the Chairman’s own official CV and legal papers. This forensic link has shattered the Chairman’s earlier denials and handed his critics the ammunition needed to claim his integrity is dead.
While groups like the Pentecostal Fellowship of Nigeria (PFN) have rushed to his defense, accusing the Council of “religious blackmail,” the damage to public trust is visible. With mosque pulpits across the country now echoing the call for his sack, the presidency faces a choice: defend a chairman whose digital trail and past writings have alienated a massive portion of the electorate, or risk a total boycott of the 2027 polls.
