INEC’s 100-day stakeholders’ meeting comes amid fresh scrutiny of Chinda, Omo-Agege and others following the Supreme Court’s Electoral Act ruling
The Independent National Electoral Commission will on Tuesday hold a national stakeholders’ meeting in Abuja to mark 100 days to the 2027 general elections, with renewed attention expected on candidate nominations following a recent Supreme Court ruling on the Electoral Act 2026.
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The meeting, which will be held at the Bola Ahmed Tinubu International Conference Centre, is expected to provide updates on the voters’ register, candidate nominations, election logistics and measures being taken to protect the integrity of the polls.
Political parties, security agencies, civil society organisations, observer groups, development partners and other stakeholders are expected to participate.
The timing has heightened interest in the cases of several politicians who changed political parties and secured fresh tickets after their former parties had conducted, or were concluding, their nomination exercises.
Among the prominent names attracting attention are Rivers State governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Kingsley Chinda; former Deputy Senate President Ovie Omo-Agege, who is contesting the Delta Central senatorial election on the platform of the Nigeria Democratic Congress; former Cross River State governor Donald Duke; and former Delta State House of Assembly Speaker Victor Ochei.
At the centre of the uncertainty is a September Supreme Court judgment which restored key provisions of the Electoral Act 2026 dealing with political party membership registers and the nomination of candidates.
A seven-member panel of the apex court, led by Justice Adamu Jauro, unanimously allowed an appeal filed by INEC and set aside the Court of Appeal judgment that had voided Sections 77(5), 77(6), 77(7) and 84(2) of the Electoral Act.
The Supreme Court held that the provisions were not inconsistent with the 1999 Constitution and restored the earlier Federal High Court position.
The provisions are significant because Sections 77(5) to 77(7) concern the membership registers political parties submit to INEC and who can participate in their primaries, while Section 84(2) governs the recognised methods for nominating candidates.
The restored law provides, among other things, that only people whose names appear on the relevant party membership register submitted to INEC can vote or be voted for at party primaries, congresses or conventions.
A party that fails to submit the required register can also face consequences regarding its ability to field candidates.
That development has generated questions over politicians who defected after their former parties had conducted primaries and subsequently obtained waivers to contest under new platforms.
However, the Supreme Court did not issue an order disqualifying any of those politicians.
That distinction is important.
Omo-Agege has already rejected suggestions that the judgment ended his 2027 ambition, insisting that the ruling did not make any order against him or declare him ineligible to contest the Delta Central election.
His case has attracted attention because he contested the APC’s Delta Central senatorial primary in May but lost to Ede Dafinone. He resigned from the party on May 22 and subsequently joined the NDC, which granted him a waiver before he emerged as its candidate.
The question now is whether the restored provisions of the Electoral Act have any retrospective effect on the circumstances surrounding his defection, waiver and subsequent nomination.
Omo-Agege’s position is that they do not automatically invalidate his candidacy.
The former Deputy Senate President said the Supreme Court merely restored the disputed sections of the law concerning party membership registers and candidate nominations and did not pronounce him ineligible.
Chinda’s case has also attracted scrutiny.
The Rivers politician emerged as the APC’s governorship candidate on May 21, shortly after the Federal High Court had delivered its judgment in the legal dispute surrounding INEC’s electoral timetable.
His supporters have maintained that the Supreme Court ruling does not affect his nomination.
Glory Wobo, president-general of the Our Will, OK Chinda Support Group movement, argued that Chinda complied with the relevant membership requirements and did not participate in primaries conducted by two different parties.
Wobo said Chinda’s APC membership was registered at ward level, ratified at the local government level and subsequently confirmed at state and national levels.
The legal dispute that produced the Supreme Court judgment began earlier in the year when the Zenith Labour Party challenged provisions of the Electoral Act relating to party membership registers and candidate nomination.
The Federal High Court dismissed the challenge in May. The Court of Appeal subsequently overturned that decision in July and voided the disputed provisions before INEC appealed to the Supreme Court.
The apex court’s September judgment reversed the Court of Appeal and restored the provisions.
The controversy has consequently shifted from whether the provisions are valid to how their restoration affects political parties and candidates whose nomination processes took place during the period when the provisions had been declared invalid by the Court of Appeal.
That is where the role of INEC becomes particularly important.
A human rights lawyer, Maximus Ugwuoke, said the Supreme Court decision should not be interpreted as a blanket cancellation of nominations.
He argued that the commission would have to consider the circumstances of individual nominations, including the applicable law at the time, the party’s membership register, the procedure used for the primary and the relevant statutory timelines.
“The Supreme Court judgment should not be interpreted as automatically invalidating all nominations or disqualifying all candidates whose primaries were conducted while the affected provisions of the Electoral Act were inoperative,” Ugwuoke said.
He cautioned against assuming that the restoration of the provisions automatically created grounds for cancelling every nomination affected by the controversy.
“A blanket cancellation of nominations cannot be assumed merely from the Supreme Court judgment,” he added.
That interpretation is consistent with the position already expressed by Omo-Agege, who has maintained that the apex court did not pronounce against his candidacy.
For INEC, however, Tuesday’s engagement comes at a critical point in the electoral timetable.
The commission’s official timetable puts the presidential and National Assembly election on February 20, 2027, while the governorship and State House of Assembly elections are scheduled for March 6, 2027.
Public campaigns for the presidential and National Assembly elections have already commenced, while governorship and State House of Assembly campaigns are scheduled to begin on October 7.
The commission therefore has limited room for prolonged uncertainty as political parties move deeper into the election cycle.
The stakeholders’ meeting is not itself an announced hearing on the eligibility of Chinda, Omo-Agege, Duke, Ochei or any other individual candidate.
INEC has not announced that it will disqualify any of them at the meeting.
Instead, the commission says the engagement is designed to update stakeholders on its preparations and promote transparency as the election approaches.
Still, any clarification from INEC on the implementation of the restored Electoral Act provisions could have significant consequences for parties that changed their candidates or granted waivers following defections.
The issue is particularly sensitive because political defections have become a major feature of the 2027 electoral contest, with politicians moving between parties in search of stronger platforms and nomination opportunities.
For candidates such as Chinda and Omo-Agege, the immediate concern is therefore not that the Supreme Court has already disqualified them, but whether their individual nomination processes satisfy the legal requirements now restored by the apex court.
That distinction could become one of the most consequential electoral questions as INEC moves from preparations into the final stages of the 2027 election process.
With 100 days to the general election, political parties will be watching closely for any clarification from the commission.
For now, the Supreme Court has restored the disputed provisions.
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Whether and how those provisions affect individual candidates remains a matter for the proper application of the law and INEC’s decisions in the cases before it.
