Imo West ticket and limits of judicial power

The contest between Governor Hope Uzodimma and former Governor Rochas Okorocha over the All Progressives Congress (APC) ticket for Imo West, the senatorial district better known as Orlu zone, is often described as a family feud between two political heavyweights. But it is more than that. It is now a test of whether a court can reach into a political party’s internal process and hand the ticket to someone the party did not choose. On the evidence reported so far, the answer the Federal High Court in Abuja gave is one that should trouble every citizen who values the rule of law because it is preposterous.

The facts as reported are these: The APC held its senatorial primary on May 18, 2026. The returning officer declared Uzodimma the winner with 230,464 votes. Okorocha disputed the result, claiming he had polled 150,780 votes against Uzodimma’s 102,158, and he took the matter to court outside the time set by the party to resolve disputes from the primary. On October 29, 2026, Justice Obiora Egwuatu ruled that Okorocha was the rightful candidate. He ordered the publication of his name and also directed that Uzodimma stop presenting himself as APC’s candidate. Those vote figures are Okorocha’s own account.  In Justice Egwuatu’s reasoning, Uzodimma did not win the primary. This is against the public record as observed on May 18 after the open ballot and now domiciled at the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and the APC headquarters.

Behind Justice Egwuatu’s decision is the creation of an institutional problem. First, a judge is not a returning officer, and a courtroom is not an open primary election venue. Courts are indispensable for interpreting the Constitution, the Electoral Act and a political party’s constitution, no doubt, and they can determine whether a procedure was lawful, whether a result was validly declared and whether a remedy is available. However, there is a difference between deciding that a process was flawed and deciding who should have won. When a court moves from deciding if a party process was unlawful to determining who should have won, it stops adjudicating and begins to substitute its own judgment for the judgment of the people who have the power to make that decision. In a primary election, the people with the power to make the choice are the party’s registered delegates or members. So, a judgment that names a winner the delegates did not select has taken the choice away from them and renders them, and their powers, nugatory in the democratic process.

This is why the Supreme Court’s reasoning in the Rotimi Amaechi and Celestine Omehia litigation matters so much. The principle, as it has been reported, is that tickets belong to political parties which issue them to the candidates they choose. Section 221 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended) reads: “No association, other than a political party, shall canvass for votes for any candidate at any election or contribute to the funds of any political party or to the election expenses of any candidate at an election.” The deeper implication of that landmark judgment, derives from S.221 of the Constitution, and it is that this section effectively places the primary responsibility for contesting and winning elections on political parties. It logically follows that it is the party that wins the election. Votes cast are, therefore, treated as belonging to the party. This interpretation underpinned the court’s conclusion that Amaechi, as the PDP’s lawful candidate, was entitled to the victory the party secured, even though Omehia’s name had appeared on the ballot. Therefore, it is common knowledge that if a party’s ticket belongs to the party, a court cannot simply reassign it to a losing aspirant because the aspirant has swayed the bench that he should have won. 

Meanwhile, the case is made more troubling by the criminal shadow that hangs over Okorocha’s ‘victory’. According to the case as framed by its critics, a petition alleging forgery against Okorocha had been forwarded by INEC to the police and the Department of State Services. That matter is yet to be settled. However, allegations are not convictions. So, Okorocha is entitled to the presumption of innocence and to a fair hearing on every charge, but the rule of law invites us to notice when a litigant facing criminal allegations about the authenticity of documents becomes the beneficiary of a judgment that may be based on the same documents. A court in such a setting has a duty to be unusually careful, to insist on the most rigorous proof and to avoid any appearance that its order to hand over a prize is rushed and hasty, while the question of integrity is still open.

It ought to be noted that the consequences of such a ruling extend far beyond Imo West. It is public knowledge that every party primary in Nigeria produces losers, none of whom is happy losing. If, therefore, a losing aspirant can file a suit and obtain an order placing him on the ballot, primaries stop being meaningful. They become a useless exercise, a waste of valuable time and a waste of resources. The bigger consequence will be that parties will no longer be able to choose their candidates with confidence and delegates will have no assurance that their votes will count, while every election will be preceded by a litigation lottery in which the winner is determined not by the members and delegates but by whichever lawyer persuades a judge best. Voters, too, lose because they will be asked to choose among candidates whose selection was determined by the courts rather than by the party’s own processes. Such reality undermines the legitimacy of the eventual result and imperils democracy, no matter who wins.

There is no doubting the fact that courts exist exactly to check abuse. If a returning officer manipulated a result, a judge has every right to intervene when a challenge is brought before him. Okorocha’s supporters will argue that the declaration was a remedy for irregularities, and that a party cannot shield a fraudulent outcome behind the word “internal.” That argument deserves a serious answer, and here it is. Even if the primary election conducted via open ballot was flawed, the remedy for a flawed process is voiding the result and ordering a lawful and verifiable re-run, supervised by the party and INEC, not the installation of a particular person whose claim to victory has not been established to the standard the law and electoral guidelines require. A court that cannot be sure who won should not declare anyone the winner. Doing so converts an allegation into a verdict, and substitutes the judge’s calculation for the party’s ballot.

Beyond this, Nigeria has suffered for years from the perception that its courts are available to the highest bidder and the most determined litigant. Each time a judgment seems to reward forum-shopping or to override settled principles of law, or thrashes judicial precedent set by the apex court, as this material case does, that perception worsens, and the damage rubs off on every judge who is studious and rules carefully. Also, every citizen who depends on the courts for fairness questions their belief and becomes more disappointed. The proper response is not to celebrate a surprising victory or to dismiss the concerns as partisan. Rather, it is to insist that the appeal proceed on its merits, that the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court examine whether the judgment respects the boundary the Supreme Court had drawn, and that the criminal petition be investigated and prosecuted to the end without fear or favour. This will serve justice to the litigants, the people and strengthen the democratic process.

For me, the Orlu senatorial ticket matters because it tests a simple proposition. In a democracy, the right to choose a candidate belongs first to the party and ultimately to the voters, not to whichever party in a lawsuit persuades a judge to rule in its favour. If that proposition gives way here, it will give way everywhere else, unless it is exclusively reserved for this matter. The higher courts must now decide whether the rule of law in Nigeria’s party politics will be protected or quietly abandoned. It must also reassure Nigerians about the powers of delegates and party members to choose their candidates. This is where this matter gets more interesting, and every citizen with a stake in free and credible elections should watch this development closely because it is ominous.