The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has declared that Prof. Joash Amupitan, SAN, does not operate any personal X (Twitter) account, saying a forensic investigation has conclusively established that all posts, replies and statements attributed to him on the platform are “fraudulent, forensically unverifiable, technically impossible, and part of a coordinated disinformation.”
The commission made this known in a public statement issued from the Office of the Chairman on Monday, saying the controversy arose on April 10, 2026, when screenshots circulated on social media claiming Amupitan operated an X account, @joashamupitan, and had made a partisan post — “Victory is sure” — in reply to @dayoisreal.
INEC said more screenshots subsequently emerged online showing emails, phone numbers, OPay and BVN verification data, and data breach records purportedly linking Amupitan to the account, all of which were widely shared across traditional and online media “as corroborating proof.”
Following the development, Amupitan, through his Chief Press Secretary, issued a statement denying ever owning or operating an X account. INEC then commissioned an independent forensic cybersecurity expert, who conducted a multi-layered investigation using X platform data, internet archive records, OSINT tools, identity forensics and cross-platform analysis.
The investigation returned five key findings. The X account was created in September 2022 with no linkage to Amupitan’s Yahoo or University of Jos email addresses. Timestamp analysis revealed that the alleged “Victory is sure” reply was posted 13 minutes before the original post by @dayoisreal — something INEC described as “physically impossible on any digital platform.”
On the same day the screenshots went viral, the account was renamed to @sundayvibe00, set to private and labelled a “Parody Account.” INEC said the sequence was “consistent with deliberate impersonation and damage-control,” adding that the self-application of the parody label “constitutes an implicit admission that the account was never Prof. Amupitan’s genuine personal account.”
At least seven fake Facebook and Instagram accounts using Amupitan’s name and profile photographs were also identified, which the commission said suggested “a sustained and coordinated impersonation operation.”
On the claim that the X account was linked to Amupitan’s known email address, amupitanj@yahoo.com, INEC said multiple account recovery and password reset attempts all failed, concluding that “there is no linkage between the email account and the X account.”
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Regarding the OPay and BVN data, the commission said the findings only confirmed that Amupitan owns the phone number, stressing that the public conclusion drawn — “this phone number is his, therefore this X account belongs to him” — was “a logical fallacy, not forensic proof.”
On data breach records cited as evidence, INEC said the references were “non-specific” and derived from “historical or third-party data sources,” adding that they “do not establish ownership, control, or operation of any X (Twitter) account.”
The commission further described the Wayback Machine result as “definitive proof of account fabrication,” noting that a comprehensive query across all dates from 2022 to the present returned “zero captures. No archived profile. No archived posts. No trace of any account activity before April 10, 2026.”