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Nigeria’s leading opposition parties are scrambling to fight a growing number of lawsuits that are threatening their capacity to mount a credible challenge in January’s presidential elections. A Nigerian court in June ordered election organizer INEC to de-register the African Democratic Congress and the Nigeria Democratic Congress, whose candidates are seen as the leading challengers to President Bola Tinubu, after a group of former lawmakers filed two separate suits against them. The political parties said they would appeal the decisions, and have said the cases raise concerns about transparency and rule of law in the upcoming elections in sub-Saharan Africa’s second-largest economy.
Experts say the rulings did not adhere to Nigerian judicial procedures. The ADC, for example, led by Nigeria’s former vice president Atiku Abubakar, was judged to have failed to meet a constitutional requirement of winning at least a quarter of votes in a previous election in order to retain its registration. But the party argued it had not violated the requirement, describing the de-registration cases as “the move of a dictatorship.”
Chidi Odinkalu, a law professor at Tufts University’s Fletcher School, told Semafor that there was evidence the party did in fact meet the requirement. The NDC case, meanwhile, involved defendants who should not have been on the case, Odinkalu said. Afolabi Adekaiyaoja, a West Africa political analyst based in Edinburgh, said that de-registering a party for failing to meet the elected office threshold should have been carried out after the last election in 2023, according to Nigeria’s electoral laws. “Doing so on the eve of the next one opens it to bias,” he told Semafor.
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More than 1.5 million have newly registered to vote in Nigeria’s January 2027 elections that will pit Tinubu against the ADC and NDC, which is led by a former state governor Peter Obi. The central electoral issue for all candidates is the health of an economy that, despite undergoing a revamp in the last three years, has recorded a 43% drop in per capita income. About 93 million people registered to vote in 2023, though just over a quarter ultimately cast ballots for the presidency
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Atiku has said that “any attempt to undermine Nigeria’s hard-won democracy through judicial manipulation is a grave danger to the Republic.” The 79-year-old, who finished in second place against Tinubu in 2023, initially sought an alliance with other opposition parties to present a united candidate to thwart Tinubu’s second term bid. But the talks fell through, and the newly formed NDC secured Obi — who finished third in 2023 — as its flagbearer
“Every Nigerian committed to the country’s progress should be deeply concerned,” Obi, 64, said about the INEC ruling that nullified his party’s status. The de-registration push could undermine public confidence and endanger the future of millions of Nigerians, he said
Alexander’s view
Nigerian elections since the return to democracy in 1999 have featured open contests between at least two major political parties, even in the two previous cases where the incumbent president sought and won re-election. De-listing two of Tinubu’s strongest challengers barely six months before the polls marks a break from that norm
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Nigeria’s electoral democracy has many imperfections. Over the years, several polls have been marred by voter intimidation, the snatching of ballot boxes, and post-election violence. However, there have been signs of progress in all that chaos. In 2015, incumbent President Goodluck Jonathan lost his second term bid in an election that was largely deemed to have been conducted without interference from him. It showed that a ruling government could not afford to take voters for granted, and portended an era of free contests.
On one hand, the opposition camp’s vote is set to be heavily split between Atiku and Obi going into 2027, putting Tinubu in pole position to retain his job. But the president’s team plans to campaign that its aggressive policy push has revitalized the economy by cutting subsidies, deregulating the foreign exchange market, and passing tax reforms. It has recorded a rare balance of payments surplus and a 340% trade surplus rise this year
In that case, Tinubu’s team should confidently go to the polls without its attorney-general throwing his weight behind a de-registration lawsuit against opposition parties, as happened in the ADC’s case. It would seem much healthier for a still nascent democracy that the game of votes is played and won on the field, without prior attempts to prevent opponents from being on the ballot
Notable
- The crises facing Nigeria’s opposition also includes internal leadership tussles between factions within each party, theAbuja-based Premium Times publication reported in June.
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