By Chinonyerem Orji

A party candidate can spend months campaigning, raising funds, building a political structure and preparing for the elections, only to discover at the last minute that a dispute over the party primaries has put the entire candidacy at risk.

Sadly, that is one of the uncomfortable realities of Nigerian elections. Securing a slot on the ballot paper may be quite a struggle but some of the fiercest battles are fought long before voters arrive at the polling unit. 

Aside from disputed party primaries, the legitimacy of a candidate can also be threatened by questions on qualifications or  failure to comply with nomination guidelines. To address these concerns, affected parties often head to court, and for them, the danger is not simply in losing a case but in the looming uncertainty. A poorly handled dispute can consume time, resources, and adversely affect a candidate’s bid. 

Nigeria’s recent elections have revealed how costly poor legal preparation can be, and this drives home a critical lesson: legal preparedness cannot begin after a dispute has become a crisis. It has to commence long before the declarations of intent, continue through the primaries and extend well beyond the election day.

The 2019 Elections: When Party Primaries Became Vicious Legal Battles

To better understand why legal preparedness matters, it helps to examine instances where internal party pre-election disputes moved beyond party meetings into court sittings and its resultant effects.

The 2019 election cycle provides two particularly important examples in Rivers and Zamfara. In both cases, disputes surrounding party processes demonstrated how disagreements within political parties became much larger electoral and constitutional battles with far reaching consequences, showing how decisions made during the nomination stage can still be felt long after the primary itself has ended.

In Rivers, two party heavyweights — former Governor Rotimi Amaechi and then-serving Senator Magnus Abe — formed rival factions within the All Progressives Congress (APC), each fielding its own candidates for the governorship election. The dispute ultimately landed before a federal high court in Port Harcourt, which nullified both the direct and indirect primaries conducted by the two factions, and also restrained the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) from recognising any APC candidate for the 2019 general elections in the state. A single unresolved internal disagreement effectively took the party out of contention in one of Nigeria’s most politically significant states.

Similarly in Zamfara, the APC’s failure to conduct valid primaries became the subject of litigation, causing the Supreme Court to deliver a judgment nullifying the victory of all APC candidates in the 2019 general elections and declaring the PDP’s first runners-up as winners of the affected seats. Candidates who had actually come second at the polls were sworn in, simply because the party that won had failed to get its internal process right months earlier. The judgment further emphasised the need for political parties to follow legitimate guidelines and rules, ensuring that their affairs and activities are conducted within the confines of the law.

These cases confirmed that a political party cannot treat its internal rules as optional paperwork. Party constitutions, nomination guidelines, notices, delegate lists and primary procedures can become legally significant evidence when a dispute reaches court. A 2019 study by the Faculty of Law, Ahmadu Bello University, Journal of Public and International Law (ABUJPIL, VOL 9), examining both cases, called for stronger internal democracy within political parties as a way to reduce this cycle of never ending pre-election disputes and litigation.

READ ALSO: Beyond the Ballot: Why Electoral Justice Matters

The 2023 Elections Showed That Pre-election Disputes Had Not Disappeared

If the 2019 experience was a warning, the 2023 election cycle fully demonstrated that the problem had not gone away. In fact, the sheer volume of litigation for this cycle suggested that pre-election disputes had become a significant part of Nigeria’s electoral process.

Ahead of the 2023 elections, INEC reported that it had been joined in 1,241 intra-party lawsuits connected to the primaries conducted by political parties for the nomination of candidates. More than 300 were reportedly before the Court of Appeal and 155 before the Supreme Court as at February 2023.

The EU Election Observation Mission also recorded well over 1,200 pre-election cases before the Federal High Courts, with most being connected to disputes arising from party primaries conducted in 2022. The mission noted that the volume of litigation created uncertainty for candidates and placed considerable pressure on INEC and the judiciary.

Away from the court cases, another critical aspect of these pre-election disputes is their compounding consequences across the electoral system. When a court decision changes a candidate close to an election, INEC has to alter candidate lists, update records, reissue documents and reprint materials, all of which cost valuable state resources.

For political parties, a protracted legal battle drains money and campaign momentum that could have gone into actually reaching voters. Candidates are left hanging in the balance, not knowing whether or not they’ll make it to the polls. And for voters, repeated last-minute litigation chips away at public trust in the process itself — leaving many to wonder whether the candidate they’re being asked to vote for will even still be on the ballot by election day. In other words, the cost of a pre-election dispute is never really contained to the courtroom as it affects every other stakeholder involved.

Winning an Electoral Dispute Requires More Than Having a Strong Complaint.. 

The scale of litigation raises another important question: what happens once a dispute reaches court? Filing a petition is only the beginning of the process. A candidate may genuinely believe that an electoral process was flawed, but the court must still be presented with sufficient evidence to establish the allegations. 

This is where legal preparedness becomes critical. A common mistake is to start thinking about evidence only after a case has been filed. Electoral litigation rarely works that way. Aggrieved parties need to be legally sensitive, aware and proactive in preserving relevant records as events unfold.

The strongest electoral defence is often built before the election begins. This is not just about having a legal team on standby but rather cultivating a culture of preparedness. It means understanding the rules, documenting compliance, preserving evidence, monitoring deadlines and identifying the correct legal remedy before a dispute becomes difficult to control.

PLAC’s 2025 analysis found that 73.1 percent of the tribunal cases it reviewed failed because the petitioners did not discharge the required evidence to support the allegations made in their petitions. Procedural failures, jurisdiction and lack of legal standing were also significant reasons for dismissal. This proves that an allegation is not evidence, neither is suspicion proof.

Read also: The Last Line of Defence: Why Courts and Tribunals Matter for Electoral Integrity

The Wider Lesson for Nigeria’s Electoral System

The growing number of cases reveals something deeper than a busy judiciary — it raises real questions about the health of internal democracy within political parties. Academic research has linked the rise in pre-election litigation to weaknesses in internal party democracy, particularly around disputes involving primaries and candidate substitution.

Nigeria’s experience shows that electoral justice cannot be measured only by how quickly courts decide election petitions. The quality of the process before election day matters just as much as how disputes are resolved.

The EU Election Observation Mission concluded that excessive pre-election litigation reflected serious distrust within and between political parties, and placed significant pressure on the judiciary, INEC and voters alike. As much as we cannot put an end to court litigation, we can work towards reducing avoidable litigation while protecting legitimate access to justice. In practice, this will mean stronger party democracy, clearer procedures, better legal awareness, effective internal dispute mechanisms and timely judicial decisions when cases do eventually get to court.

Courts can enforce the law, but they cannot permanently replace functioning political institutions. If every disagreement over a party primary becomes a court case, the problem is no longer simply judicial — it’s institutional. Political parties need credible internal mechanisms for resolving disputes before candidates feel that litigation is their only option.

Political competition will always produce disagreements. However, it is our duty to ensure that when disagreements arise, they are handled early, fairly and within a clear legal framework. An election may happen on one day, but the legal groundwork for that day begins months earlier.

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