The Faculty of Law at the University of Jos has issued a formal rebuttal dismissing allegations made by former Sports Minister Solomon Dalung against INEC Chairman Professor Joash Amupitan, describing the claims as politically motivated, entirely without foundation, and contradicted by the documented record of Amupitan’s tenure as Dean of the faculty.
The statement, signed by Faculty Dean Professor Francis M. Kwede, was issued in response to a viral television interview in which Dalung alleged that Amupitan, during his time as Dean, manipulated academic results and victimised students, specifically claiming that the results of 16 students in the 2009/2010 LLB class were traded off in favour of what he described as special students.
The faculty categorically rejected the allegation, stating that nothing of the sort occurred in that class or in any other class before or after it, to the best knowledge of faculty board members. Far from manipulating results, the faculty said, Amupitan introduced reforms that improved transparency and accuracy in the results processing system. Upon assuming the deanship in 2008, he replaced manual result compilation with an Excel-based system that eliminated errors and enabled students to meet Nigerian Law School deadlines more reliably.
The faculty described Amupitan’s conduct throughout his tenure from 2008 to 2014 as marked by the highest standards of honour, candour, and integrity, noting that his time as Dean was characterised by significant academic and infrastructure improvements. He was subsequently elected repeatedly by the University Senate into the Governing Council and later appointed Deputy Vice Chancellor for Administration.
On Dalung’s personal grievances, the faculty stated that records showed he completed his LLM programme in December 2010 without incident and that he never appeared before the Faculty Board to contest any student’s degree classification or raise concerns about result manipulation on behalf of any student.
In a separate but related development, a forensic cybersecurity investigation commissioned by INEC conclusively exonerated Amupitan of allegations that he operated a partisan X account and posted a politically charged message in reply to another user.
Chief Press Secretary to the INEC Chairman Adedayo Oketola confirmed that the investigation deployed a multi-layered forensic methodology incorporating X platform data, internet archive records, open-source intelligence tools, identity forensics, and cross-platform analysis.
The key findings were unambiguous. The X account at the centre of the controversy, @joashamupitan, was created in September 2022 but showed no verifiable linkage to any of Amupitan’s known email addresses. A timestamp analysis of the alleged reply, “Victory is sure,” showed that the post was published 13 minutes before the original message it purported to respond to, a sequence that is physically impossible on any digital platform. A search of the Wayback Machine web archive found zero records of the account’s existence before April 2026. The alleged reply also could not be found in any live or archived thread.
On the same day the screenshots went viral, the account was renamed from @joashamupitan to @sundayvibe00, set to private, and relabelled as a parody account, a sequence the report described as consistent with deliberate impersonation followed by damage-control measures. The handle was subsequently reclaimed by a verified cybersecurity researcher who explicitly disclaimed any affiliation with its previous operator.
The investigation concluded that all posts, replies, and statements attributed to Amupitan on X were fraudulent, forensically unverifiable, technically impossible, and part of a coordinated disinformation campaign against the INEC Chairman.
