Fault Electoral Act restriction on nomination mode
By Omeiza Ajayi
ABUJA: Nigeria’s registered political parties on Tuesday did a self-appraisal of the recent primary elections they conducted across the country ahead of the 2027 general election, and came up with a damning verdict – a charade.
Speaking under the aegis of Inter-Party Advisory Council IPAC, the umbrella body of all registered political parties in Nigeria, the parties described the just-concluded general election primaries as a charade, blaming the crisis squarely on the restriction imposed by the Electoral Act 2026 which eliminated indirect primaries as a valid mode of candidate nomination.
IPAC National Chairman, Dr. Yusuf Mamman Dantalle, who stated this at the Independent National Electoral Commission’s INEC Second Quarterly Consultative Meeting with leaders of political parties held at the Commission’s headquarters in Abuja on Tuesday, said the nomination exercise which officially concluded on Saturday, May 30, 2026, exposed significant legal, administrative, and operational challenges that deserve urgent national attention.
Dantalle said the restrictive provisions of Section 84(2) of the Electoral Act 2026, which limited parties to either consensus or direct primaries, effectively cornered political parties into processes that were neither genuinely democratic nor practically workable.
In many instances, he said, parties adopted the consensus option despite the existence of multiple aspirants who had duly purchased expression of interest and nomination forms — with several of those aspirants persuaded, and in some cases pressured, to step down after preferred candidates had already been identified by influential party stakeholders.
“While some aspirants accepted these arrangements in the interest of party unity, others challenged their exclusion, arguing that genuine consensus requires the voluntary agreement of all contestants. Consequently, several disputes have found their way to the courts, creating uncertainty and avoidable tension within the political system,” Dantalle said.
He said the financial and logistical burden of direct primaries compounded the crisis further, hitting hardest the parties without access to governmental resources.
Faced with those pressures, some parties resorted to extraordinary measures to avoid circumstances that could trigger direct primaries — including deliberately restricting access to nomination forms and failing to publicly announce primary schedules in a timely manner.
“These developments constitute an unfortunate and unintended consequence of the current legal framework governing party primaries,” the IPAC chairman said.
Dr. Dantalle told the gathering that none of this came as a surprise to the Council. At its General Assembly meeting held on February 26, 2026, in Abuja, IPAC had reviewed the implications of the Electoral Act 2026 and formally urged the National Assembly to reconsider the exclusion of indirect primaries, taking those concerns to relevant national institutions as well as the United Nations, the European Union, the Economic Community of West African States ECOWAS, diplomatic missions, and Nigerians in the Diaspora.
“The events surrounding the recently concluded primaries have unfortunately validated many of the concerns previously raised by the Council,” he said.
IPAC called on the National Assembly, in collaboration with relevant stakeholders, to undertake a comprehensive review of the Electoral Act 2026 to address the operational failures the nomination process laid bare.
The Council maintained that political parties should retain the flexibility to determine the most appropriate method of selecting their candidates, provided such processes remain democratic, transparent, and consistent with constitutional principles.
He said; “Electoral laws should promote democratic participation, strengthen political institutions, and advance the national interest rather than create avoidable obstacles to effective political competition”.
The council also raised concerns about the confusion generated by conflicting court judgments on INEC’s powers to regulate and fix timelines for party primaries, saying the contradictory rulings had introduced avoidable uncertainty into the democratic process and eroded public confidence.
IPAC additionally flagged difficulties encountered by parties in submitting updated membership registers that included National Identification Numbers NIN within a compressed timeframe, saying many genuine party members were inadvertently excluded as a result.
On the political climate, Dantalle condemned recent incidents of political violence in Osun State, urging all political actors to embrace issue-based campaigns and reject violence, intimidation, hate speech, and political extremism ahead of the forthcoming governorship elections in Ekiti and Osun States and the 2027 General Election.
“No political ambition is worth the loss of human life, the destruction of property, or the destabilisation of communities,” he said.
He called on security agencies to discharge their responsibilities with professionalism and neutrality throughout the electoral cycle.
