By Our Correspondent<\/p>\n
The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja has struck down four key provisions of the Electoral Act 2026, ruling that they are inconsistent with the 1999 Constitution.<\/p>\n
The affected provisions are Sections 77(5), 77(6), 77(7) and 84(2) provisions dealing with party membership registers and how political parties select their candidates.<\/p>\n
In a unanimous judgment in the case involving Zenith Party and INEC, the three-member panel led by Justice Balkisu Bello Aliyu overturned the earlier decision of the Federal High Court.<\/p>\n
The lead judgment was delivered by Justice Eberechi Nyesom-Wike.<\/p>\n
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?<\/p>\n
The court ruled that political parties cannot be subjected to statutory restrictions that interfere with powers guaranteed to them under the Constitution.<\/p>\n
Section 77(5) restricting participation in primaries to members whose names appear on the register submitted to INEC was struck down.<\/p>\n
Section 77(6) preventing parties from using a different membership register during primaries, congresses and conventions was nullified.<\/p>\n
Section 77(7) which could prevent a party from fielding candidates if it failed to submit its membership register within the stipulated period was also declared unconstitutional.<\/p>\n
Section 84(2) which limited candidate nomination to direct primaries or consensus was equally struck down.<\/p>\n
The Court of Appeal held that political parties should retain greater discretion over their internal affairs, including the process through which they select candidates.<\/p>\n
The court did NOT cancel the entire Electoral Act.<\/p>\n
It also did NOT abolish the requirement for political parties to maintain membership registers and submit them to INEC.<\/p>\n
Only the specific provisions found to be unconstitutional were struck down. (Punch Newspapers)<\/p>\n
With the 2027 elections approaching, this judgment could have major implications for how political parties conduct their primaries and choose candidates.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
By Our Correspondent The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja has struck down four key provisions of the Electoral Act 2026, ruling that they are inconsistent with the 1999 Constitution. The affected provisions are Sections 77(5), 77(6), 77(7) and 84(2) provisions dealing with party membership registers and how political parties select their candidates. In a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":13470,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-law-crime","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17438"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17438\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17439,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17438\/revisions\/17439"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dailyechoes.ng\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}