-By Abdul Mahmud

The news about the Supreme Court’s decision restoring sections 77(5), 77(6), 77(7) and 84(2) of the Electoral Act 2026 which broke late last Thursday has done more than resolve the dispute between the Independent National Electoral Commission and the Zenith Labour Party, while altering the legal terrain upon which political parties prepare for the 2027 general election. The provisions mentioned above are now part of the law governing the nomination of candidates; and political parties cannot treat them as optional rules simply because some of their internal processes may already have proceeded on a different understanding. The immediate consequence is clear. Section 77(5) ties participation in party primaries, congresses and conventions to the membership register submitted to INEC within the prescribed period and Section 77(6) prevents a party from using a different register for those purposes, while section 77(7) attaches a particularly serious consequence to failure to submit the register as required. Section 84(2), meanwhile, prescribes direct primaries or consensus as the methods through which political parties nominate candidates.

The Supreme Court has now held that these provisions are not inconsistent with the Constitution.

The consequence for political parties is that internal party arrangements cannot be divorced from compliance with the law governing election. A party may have its constitution, convention, leadership organs, and rules, but those instruments operate within the legal framework established by the Constitution and the Electoral Act. The Supreme Court has now confirmed that the National Assembly may impose these requirements on the electoral activities of political parties.

The difficulty, however, in understanding the consequences of all of this ies in the chronology. The Court of Appeal declared the provisions invalid on 16 July 2026. INEC subsequently appealed to the Supreme Court, which has now set aside that decision and restored the provisions. During the intervening period, parties preparing for 2027 were confronted with an appellate judgment that removed the legal foundation for some of the disputed requirements. The present judgment has brought the provisions back into force, but political parties that acted during the period of uncertainty cannot simply assume that every step they took will automatically survive scrutiny, with specific regards to party primaries.

A political party that conducted its nomination process contrary to section 84(2) now faces an obvious legal question. If the party conducted an indirect primary at a time when the Court of Appeal had declared the statutory restriction unconstitutional, can a candidate subsequently challenge that nomination on the ground that the Supreme Court has restored the provision? The answer cannot be had by saying that the Supreme Court validated section 84(2). Questions concerning the temporal effect of the judgment, the doctrine of precedent, accrued rights and the circumstances in which a completed nomination may be challenged will have to be resolved in individual cases. The same problem arises under sections 77(5) to (7). A party may have conducted a congress or primary using a register different from the one submitted to INEC, or may have failed to comply with the statutory requirement concerning submission of its register. Such conduct can no longer be saved by the Court of Appeal’s judgment. A dissatisfied aspirant may now argue that the nomination process was conducted in breach of the governing electoral law.

This development consequently opens a new field of pre-election litigation, but it does not, by itself, reopen the statutory window within which such proceedings may be commenced. The Constitution has imposed a strict temporal discipline on pre-election disputes. By section 285(9) of the Constitution, every pre-election matter must be filed not later than 14 days from the date of the occurrence of the event, decision or action complained of. The Electoral Act operates within that constitutional framework and cannot be invoked to extend a limitation period which the Constitution itself has prescribed.

The critical question, therefore, is not simply when the legal consequence of an irregular nomination or electoral decision becomes apparent, but when the particular event, decision or action forming the subject of the complaint occurred. Once that event has occurred, the statutory clock begins to run. A subsequent discovery of its implications, or the emergence of a further consequence flowing from the original act, will not ordinarily revive a cause of action that has already become statute-barred. The courts have approached the question by examining the reliefs sought and identifying the specific event or decision that constitutes the plaintiff’s complaint. This has an important constitutional consequence. The jurisdiction conferred over pre-election matters is inseparable from the temporal limitation imposed by section 285(9). The court cannot enlarge the period by recourse to equitable considerations, nor can a litigant circumvent the limitation by repackaging an expired pre-election grievance as a post-election complaint. The jurisprudential purpose is evident: disputes concerning the selection, nomination and sponsorship of candidates are intended to be brought and, as far as possible, resolved before the election, leaving election petitions to address matters properly arising from the conduct and outcome of the election itself.

There is, however, a constitutionally recognised qualification. Section 285(13A) excludes from the computation of time periods during which a natural disaster, war, State or national emergency, or other force majeure prevents the filing or hearing of a pre-election matter. That exception is necessarily confined to circumstances falling within its terms; it does not constitute a general power to extend the 14-day limitation period.

 

The consequence is that the emergence of this new question does not necessarily mean that an aggrieved aspirant still has a live pre-election cause of action. Where the complained-of event occurred more than 14 days before the action was commenced, the constitutional limitation may already have extinguished the remedy. The real litigation may consequently shift from the substantive validity of the underlying act to the anterior questions of when the cause of action accrued, what precisely constitutes the event, decision or action complained of, and whether the proceedings fall within the constitutional definition of a pre-election matter.

Nigeria’s electoral jurisprudence has already demonstrated that the nomination of candidates is one of the most heavily litigated stages of an election. The Supreme Court’s decision provides another statutory basis upon which an aspirant may challenge a party’s nomination process. The practical significance may be greater than the immediate dispute involving ZLP. A candidate who loses a primary may no longer have to confine the challenge to allegations of manipulation, exclusion or breach of the party constitution. The question may become whether the entire process complied with the Electoral Act. Section 77(7) deserves particular attention because its consequence goes beyond the validity of an internal party exercise. The provision concerns the eligibility of a party to sponsor a candidate where the statutory requirement relating to its membership register has not been satisfied. That gives the membership-register question potential consequences for the party’s participation in the election itself. For political parties, the practical consequence is that compliance cannot be left to assumption or delegated entirely to party officials who handled the earlier processes. Each party now needs to establish, from its own records, whether it has complied with the requirements the Supreme Court has restored.

The first step should be an immediate audit of the party’s 2027 preparations. The audit should establish the membership register submitted to INEC, the date of submission, the register actually used for any congress or primary, the persons entitled to participate under the applicable register, the procedure adopted for nomination, and the documentary evidence supporting every stage of the process. Parties that cannot reconcile their internal records with the statutory requirements have a problem that should not be postponed until after candidates have emerged. In addition, Section 84(2) is equally consequential. Direct primaries and consensus are now the statutory routes for nomination. Political parties that  historically relied upon delegate-based indirect primaries must reconsider their procedures. A party constitution cannot be invoked as a substitute for compliance with a statutory provision that the Supreme Court has expressly upheld.

There is also a larger institutional consequence. The judgment has settled, at least for now, the constitutional argument that these provisions unlawfully interfere with the independence of political parties. The Court of Appeal accepted that argument, while relying on the constitutional framework governing political parties. The Supreme Court has now rejected that position by restoring the statutory requirements. Political parties should therefore stop treating the controversy as a temporary legal set-back.

The law has now been clarified. What remains uncertain is the fate of processes undertaken during the period in which the law itself was the subject of conflicting judicial pronouncements. This question will probably not end with this judgment. It may move from the Supreme Court’s constitutional determination to a series of disputes over particular primaries, congresses, registers and nominations. The parties that will be most exposed are those that assumed that the Court of Appeal’s July judgment had permanently removed the disputed provisions from the electoral landscape. It did not. The Supreme Court has restored them, and 2027 will now be contested not only at the polling booth but also over whether the parties themselves complied with the law before their candidates ever reached the ballot. Only the Federal High Court by virtue of Sections 29(1), 32 and 88(2) and (3) of the Electoral Act, 2026 can nullify the candidacies of candidates not validly nominated. Not INEC.