By Adams Yahaya Atata Esq 

Right from the day of yore, Men have existed and functioned within Various communities; and in that process, joining association or organisation is part and parcel of their existence. Thus, these organisations exist to promote certain peculiar ideals to which members of the societies admire, thereby becoming members for the purpose of promoting and popularising the set goals and ideals. This is exactly where the idea of political parties evolved. Today, people with identical ideologies and goals come together to form political parties and thereafter admit members for elongation, expansion and sustenance of democratic ideals. However, the right to admit members and right to nominate or sponsor candidates belongs exclusively to the party. 

That being so, in Nigeria today, many political parties exist and to that extent, their membership is drawn from all walks of life. Notwithstanding this blanket acceptance of membership, political parties are always in charge of their affairs. This means, in the selection of candidates for elections, the parties do not entertain external control or imposition by external forces, or by any self-acclaimed individual in the society, but by bonafide members of the political parties. 

That said, it is not in doubt that the primary election for the governorship election in Ekiti State was conducted through a popular affirmation by party members on the 27th October 2025. Meanwhile, before the said affirmation, it was/is a known fact that there were certain inescapable procedures to be followed by the party members and the party itself before any primary election could be conducted and considered won and lost. The All Progressive Congress (APC), declared the nomination process open, and all interested party members, including Mrs. Abimbola Olawunmi, purchased Nomination and Expression of Interest Forms in their bid to contest for the election. At the end of the exercise, Mrs. Abimbola was disqualified from participating in the governorship primary election. Based on this, she headed to Court where she submitted four questions for the determination of the Court, namely:

First, she asked the Court to determine whether by a combined reading of Section 84(3) of Electoral Act and Section 177 and 182 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), whether the APC can impose other conditions not forming part of the Constitution to disqualify her. She based her second question on the legality of her disqualification by the National Working Committee of APC on the 9th of October 2026. And the third and fourth questions were judicial scrutiny of all consequential acts taken by APC pursuant to her disqualification, including conduct of the governorship primary election held on the 27th October 2025. Consequently, she sought various declarative and injunctive reliefs, which included the setting aside of her disqualification and the primary election held on the 27th of October 2025.

Arguing in her case, she maintained that once a complaint touches on compliance with the Electoral Act in the nomination of candidates, the matter becomes justiciable and capable of judicial intervention. She also maintained that qualifications for elections into political offices have been sufficiently provided for in the 1999 Constitution. She therefore concluded that all other conditions imposed by the APC’s Screening Committee were all illegal, because they contradict the express provision of the 1999 Constitution under Section 77 thereof. 

On the flip side of the coin, all the defendants, namely; the APC, INEC, and Mr. Biodun Abayomi Oyebanji, vehemently took different positions, maintaining that her suit was not justiciable or cognisable under the law. That her suit was statute-barred, and that she had not disclosed any reasonable cause of action. The defendants, who were Respondents on her appeal, also maintained that Mrs. Abimbola, who was the plaintiff at the trial, and the Appellant at the Court of Appeal had no locus standi to challenge the outcome of the primary election conducted by the APC and monitored by the INEC. 

After a thorough review of the various positions put forward by both sides, that is, the Appellant and the three sets of Respondents, the Court dismissed the appeal filed by the Appellant on the following grounds: 

1. On statute barred, – the Trial Court held that the event or action complained of by the plaintiff happened on the 25th of September, 2025. Equity aids the vigilance, and delay defeats equity. This suit, by all standards, reasoning and conclusion, was not filed within 14 days from the date of the alleged disqualification of the plaintiff. It took the plaintiff more than 27 days to file the suit. …The suit, therefore, had not been filed within the limited period or window period provided by the law and is therefore statute barred. 

On appeal, these findings of the Federal High Court was not only sanctioned with judicial imprimatur, but was also amplified. To this end, the Court of Appeal declared at pages 136 to 137 that:

“The Appellant has strongly relied on PDP v. Uche (Supra). The Court has carefully studied the decision, and with profound respect to the Learned Senior Counsel for the Appellant, this Court is unable to accept the proposition that that authority avails the Appellant in the peculiar circumstances of this appeal… 

The instant case, however, stands on materially different footing. Here, the facts disclosed no pending internal dispute resolution mechanism before the National Working Committee of the first Respondent capable of postponing accrued cause of action. The Appellant did not demonstrate, either in the affidavit evidence or by reference to the relevant guidelines of the first Respondent, that any formal appeal remained pending before the National Working Committee. More importantly, there is nothing before this Court suggesting that the Appellant invoked any further internal appellate jurisdiction of the party or that the decision disqualifying her remained interlocutory or provisional pending final determination by another organ. 

Also, at page 139 of the judgment, the Court of Appeal concluded as follows: 

“The Court therefore finds itself in agreement with the learned trial judge that the Appellant’s cause of action, becomes not only on the alleged date of 9th October, 2025, but immediately upon the adverse decision of the competent Appeals Screening Committee affirming her disqualification. By the Appellant’s own showing, the adverse determination had become known to her not later than 26th September, 2025. Time under section 285(9), therefore, began to run from that date. 

The suit commenced on the 21st day of October, 2025, having been instituted outside the constitutionally prescribed period of 14 days, was consequently statute barred, and therefore incompetent. 

The Learned Trial Judge was, in this respectful view, right when he held that the Appellant’s suit had become statute barred, and that the Court lacked jurisdiction to entertain same”.

1. On whether the Appellant was an aspirant within the contemplation of section 285(14) of the 1999 Constitution, the Court held that:

 “The law has never been in doubt that political parties, as voluntary associations, enjoy a significant measure of authority in the regulation of their domestic affairs. 

…Upon a holistic appraisal of the Appellant’s complaints, this Court is persuaded that the dispute remained substantially one concerning the internal screening process and eligibility determination adopted by the First Respondent in regulating participation in its governorship primary election. Such complaints, notwithstanding its constitutional coloration, remain fundamentally domestic and not justiciable”. 

The Court therefore holds that, the Learned Trial Court ultimately arrived at the correct conclusion, when it declined jurisdiction notwithstanding certain reservations regarding aspects of its reasoning. 

1. On application of Section 15 of the Court of Appeal Act, the Court held thus: 

“In the instant case, therefore, the Court is constrained to observe with respect that the Learned Trial Judge ought to have proceeded to determine the substantive claim placed before the Court notwithstanding his conclusion that the suit was incompetent. The constitutional expectation under Section 285(8) referenced by the authoritative admission in PDP v. Uche (Supra) demanded no less. To that extent, the complaint of the Appellants is not without merit. See Sylvia versus INEC (2025) 14 NWLR 63 at 73, per Garba JSC. 

However, that conclusion does not end the matter. The more difficult and constitutionally profound question is, “whether this Court may now invoke Section 15 of the Court of Appeal Act to determine the substantive suit notwithstanding the findings already reached on the competence of the action. 

… The inevitable implication is that the lower Court itself lacked jurisdiction to determine the substantive claims. If the Trial Court lacked jurisdiction to adjudicate the substantive suit, this Court cannot invoke Section 15 of the Court of Appeal Act to exercise a jurisdiction which the lower Court itself never possessed. 

In the final analysis, while this Court agrees that the learned trial judge ought to have determined the substantive claims, notwithstanding his conclusion on jurisdiction, this Court is unable, with profound respect to learned counsel for the Appellants, to hold that this Court possesses competence under Section 15 of the Court of Appeal Act to determine the substantive suit in the peculiar circumstances of this case, particularly, having regard to the finding that the suit itself is statute barred and incompetent. 

This issue is accordingly resolved substantially against the Appellants, save only to the extent that the learned trial judge ought to have pronounced upon the substantive claims in obedience to Section 285(8) of the Constitution. 

1. On the competence of the appeal based on the brief of arguments filed, the Court restated the settled position of the law as follows. 

“In the final result, the motion on notice filed by the first Respondent challenging the competence of the Appellants’ brief of argument succeeds and is hereby granted. The Appellants’ brief of argument filed on the 30th day of April 2016, having been filed in clear violation of the provision of Paragraph 14a of the Election Judicial Proceedings Practice Directions 2023, is hereby struck out for being incompetent. The inevitable consequence of the striking out of the Appellant’s brief of argument is that the appeal is left unsupported and therefore liable to dismissal. Accordingly, the appeal is hereby dismissed. 

Having brought out the salient findings of the Court of Appeal on the substantive appeal, it needs to be pointed out that the Third Respondent, Mr. Biodun Abayomi Oyebanji challenged the finding of the Federal Court which held that the Appellants having purchased nomination form and paid an aspirant under the law, and filed a cross-appeal. 

After a careful consideration of the cross-appeal, the Court of Appeal came to the conclusion that:

“The learned trial judge fell into a deep error when, notwithstanding his findings earlier in the judgment on what qualifies a member of a political party as an aspirant, he proceeded to classify the first cross-Respondent as an aspirant without any foundation on which the same can stand, as reasoned supra in the judgment. That finding is inconsistent with the settled jurisprudence of electoral law and cannot be permitted to stand. 

It is in consequence that the sole issue is therefore resolved in favour of the cross-Appellant against the 1st Cross-Respondent. The cross-appeal thus succeeds and allowed, thus the finding of the Trial Court that the first cross-Respondent is an “aspirant” within the contemplation of both 1999 Constitution and the Electoral Act 2022 is hereby set aside”.

Having said that, it is submitted that the findings of the Court of Appeal in the instant case are unassailable and stand strong like the Rock of Gibraltar, that cannot be pulled down by any appeal on same, because apart from being on firma terra, the case leading to the appeal was built on quicksand and weak terrain, thereby self-defeating. As a result of this, it will take “a cow to pass through the eye of a needle” than for any appeal found on this sound reasoning to be upturned. This is because, it is head you lose, tail you lose for the Appellant. The reason for this is not far-fetched, because, the suit was evidently filed outside 27 days as against 14 days permitted by the law. The Appellant failed woefully to establish a locus standi to file the case, and the case filed by her is not justiciable before any Court of law, and to worsen the situation, the appeal filed was naked and incompetent, because the brief filed in support was defective and cannot support the appeal, as it exceeded statutorily recognized number of pages, which is 25 pages.

It submitted therefore, that the judgement of the Court of Appeal having affirmed the decision of the lower Court has become a concurrent finding by two Courts, namely: The Federal High Court and the Court of Appeal. And that being the case, the Supreme Court cannot interfere with concurrent findings of the two Courts highlighted above, especially that all the viruses that ravaged the case right from the Trial Court to the Court of Appeal are cancerous and terminal, which cannot be remedied by any means possible, except the Appellant wishes to go on a destructive legal peregrination that cannot yield anything tangible, but total fiasco. 

What is more? the Supreme Court over time has admonished counsel and litigants alike to always shun the idea of filing a fruitless case simply to gauge the feelings of the Courts. This, the Apex Court believes, will aid to decongest the Courts and bring sanity to the judicial process and judiciary in the long run. 

On the whole, this case has not only restated the position of the law as laid down by the locus classicus case of Onuoha v. Okafor (1983) 2 SCNLR 244, which forbid internal affairs of political parties from being litigated, interfered or meddled with by the Court, but also expanded and reinforced the law on party dispute by sound and unimpeachable reasoning. Therefore, how any appeal on this will offstage and detract from the sound reasoning of this case remains unknown.

Atata, a legal practitioner lives in Lagos.

Dear readers, we really need your support to keep on serving you with authoritative, truthful, and juicy stories everyday. For your support, please reach out to the editor @gavelinternational66@gmail.com