By Adamu Lawal Toro
In an election, the referee must not only be fair; he must also be seen to be fair. That simple principle appears to have escaped the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
INEC has redeployed Mrs Oluyemi Titilayo Adeyemi-Showunmi from her position as Administrative Secretary in its Lagos office to the post of Director of Electoral Operations.
She is the wife of Segun Showunmi, a spokesman for the Tinubu/Shettima 2027 Presidential Campaign Council.
Read that again.
The wife of a man campaigning for the President’s re-election now heads the department responsible for coordinating polling arrangements, deploying election materials and managing the personnel who will conduct the presidential election.
The 2027 election is only a few months away.
Showunmi has been quick to defend his wife. He argues that she is a Level 17 officer and a career civil servant who has spent her professional life working with INEC.
She is not a political appointee, he says. He also points out that Peter Obi won Lagos State in 2023 while she was serving there.
All these points may be valid. More importantly, nobody has questioned her professional competence.
Samson Itodo of Yiaga Africa has made a similar point. Nothing publicly available so far suggests that she has acted improperly, and nobody should presume that she will.
But that is not the issue.
A conflict of interest is not proof of wrongdoing. Rather, it arises when personal or family ties could reasonably create the perception that private interests might influence the performance of public duties.
Judges recuse themselves from cases involving relatives, not necessarily because they are corrupt, but because justice must not only be done; it must also be seen to be done.
Auditors do not audit companies owned by their spouses, and examiners do not mark their children’s scripts.
Why, then, should an electoral commission hold itself to a lower standard?
The Problem of Public Confidence
Consider how the appointment might look to the opposition.
An opposition candidate who narrowly loses the January 2027 election may question the logistics: election materials that arrive late in strongholds, polling units that open at noon, or officials who fail to turn up.
Fairly or unfairly, the candidate may ask who was responsible for coordinating these operations.
The answer would point to the wife of his opponent’s campaign spokesman.
What happens then? How would INEC defend an election result produced, at least in part, under a cloud of suspicion that the commission could easily have avoided?
There was a straightforward way to prevent this controversy. Nick Dazang, a former INEC director, has pointed to one option: the commission could have reassigned the officer to a different role until after the election.
It could also have extended the tenure of the outgoing director or appointed a deputy to act in the interim.
None of these options would have punished Mrs Adeyemi-Showunmi or brought her career to an end. They would simply have protected both her professional reputation and the commission’s credibility from avoidable suspicion.
INEC chose none of these options. Worse, it has offered no public explanation for the decision.
A Wider Question About INEC’s Independence
This is not the only appointment raising questions about potential conflicts of interest.
President Bola Tinubu has also nominated Professor Mustapha Aliu as an INEC national commissioner representing the North-West.
Aliu is the elder brother of Sokoto State Governor Ahmed Aliyu, who is seeking re-election on the platform of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).
The Sokoto State Government has maintained that family ties do not disqualify a candidate and that Aliu does not hold any position in a political party.
Each case may be defended on its individual merits. Taken together, however, they raise legitimate questions about the standards INEC applies to appointments and redeployments, particularly at a time when public confidence in the commission is critical.
These concerns are even more significant as INEC introduces artificial intelligence into aspects of election result verification and opposition parties continue to question its independence.
Trust in elections takes years to build, but a single controversial appointment can undermine it.
INEC Must Address the Concerns
INEC must act decisively to protect its credibility. First, it should publish the criteria guiding its recent redeployments and demonstrate that the decisions were based on objective considerations, including merit, seniority and operational requirements.
Second, it should consider assigning Mrs Adeyemi-Showunmi to an equally senior position that does not involve direct responsibility for election operations in 2027.
Such a move would not amount to a finding of misconduct; it would simply help protect the integrity of the electoral process.
Third, INEC should establish a clear conflict-of-interest and recusal policy for personnel whose close relatives hold significant positions in political parties or campaign organisations.
The policy should provide transparent safeguards without unfairly penalising career officers for their family relationships.
The Senate, for its part, must scrutinise Professor Aliu’s nomination carefully rather than treat his confirmation as a routine exercise.
The central question should be whether the appointment meets the standards of independence, impartiality and public confidence expected of an electoral umpire.
Professor Joash Amupitan has promised Nigerians free, fair and credible elections. Making such promises is easy.
Demonstrating a commitment to them through transparent decisions is the real test.
This is a test INEC can pass by addressing the concerns openly and taking reasonable steps to prevent avoidable doubts about its neutrality.
Ultimately, the credibility of the 2027 elections will not be determined solely at the State House or during political party rallies.
It will also depend on the confidence of ordinary Nigerians who turn out to vote.
Consider a voter in a village in Jigawa State who wakes before dawn and walks to his polling unit.
He must have confidence that the people responsible for organising his vote are committed to a process in which every ballot counts equally, regardless of party affiliation. INEC owes him that confidence.
Toro is a journalist based in Bauchi.
