By: Chika Esomonu
SINCE the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, released the Official Campaign Timetable for the 2027 General Elections, all attention has shifted to Abuja. In the timetable, campaigns for Presidential and National Assembly Elections begin on Tuesday, 19 August 2026 and end on 15 January 2027, exactly 24 hours before the elections scheduled for 16 January 2027.
Governorship and State Houses of Assembly Elections campaigns begin on Wednesday, 9 September 2026 and end on Friday, 5 February 2027, a day before the 6 February 2027 elections.
Political parties and candidates are expected to begin public campaigns – including rallies, media advertisements, voter engagement, and grassroots mobilization within the respective periods.
This development has again brought to the fore the need for the Supreme Court to speedily resolve the judicial hijack of the Labour Party, LP as the lower courts overstepped by wading into LP’s internal affairs and misapplying the April 4, 2025 precedent.
Instructively, LP was not registered in Abuja boardrooms but built in wards, unions, and at polling units by ordinary Nigerians who believed a people’s party was possible. Millions of ordinary Nigerians ranging from workers, artisans, traders, students, transporters, etc. joined the LP movement not because of its popularity, but because they saw it as theirs and decided to own it, promote it and protect it to the extent of waking up to be at polling units as early as 6am during elections.
That is why this moment hurts. Not because of names or factions, but of what is at stake: whether a party built, supported and promoted by ordinary Nigerians can be taken away by court orders and elite bargains? That is why the dispute now before the Supreme Court is about whether our courts will protect the rule of law, or normalize judicial hijacking of political parties?
As the Supreme Court prepares to speak again, one enjoins it to revisit its earlier verdict of April 4, 2025 when it said: “We will not be used to hijack a party.” That day, their Lordships did three critical things that the lower courts blatantly ignored or overlooked.
First, they protected jurisdiction. The Court reminded everyone that judges do not run parties and pointed everyone back to the Constitution and the party’s own rules.
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Second, it affirmed that membership, discipline, and leadership of a political party are its internal matters. It did not declare anyone the national chairman. It did not dissolve any NEC. It said, in essence: “This house has its own landlord. Go settle it there first.” That is judicial wisdom.
Third, it preserved the status quo ante. The Supreme Court neither declared Abure’s seat vacant nor installed a new leadership. By refusing to make that declaration, it technically left things as they were before the litigation and told the parties to go back to their constitution.
That was the law.
As we await a balanced ruling expected to address the areas where the lower courts missed it, four legal pillars demand the Supreme Court’s attention.
First, jurisdiction was breached when the Federal High Court, per Justice Lifu, issued an order directing INEC to recognise the Nenadi-LP faction. That directive crossed from adjudication into administration. Section 6 of the Constitution vests judicial power in courts to interpret laws, not run political parties. Section 82(1) of the Electoral Act 2022 also places the conduct of party congresses and leadership succession within party constitutions. Therefore, a court without jurisdiction is like a driver without a license – no matter the intention, the act is void. If this stands, any member can run to court tomorrow to install a national chairman or executives in any party. That is nothing more than judicial endorsement and a judicial hijack, not rule of law.
Second, internal affairs was inverted: The Court of Appeal described the Nenadi-LP NEC as a product of “doctrine of necessity.” With respect, necessity cannot override a party’s constitution. You cannot use a legal phrase to break into a house and then call it renovation. April 4, 2025 told us to stay out. The lower courts walked in. The Supreme Court has consistently held that matters of party membership, discipline, and leadership are non-justiciable internal affairs. The purpose is simple: judges are not delegates of party conventions.
Yet the lower courts cited internal affairs and then did the opposite. The Court of Appeal, in its ruling described the Nenadi-LP faction’s NEC as arising from a “doctrine of necessity” thereby constituting a label used to justify stepping into the internal management of the party and validating a parallel structure. That is not deference. That is intervention. You cannot use the shield of “internal affairs” to justify the very intrusion the doctrine forbids.
Third, the April 4, 2025 status quo precedent was destroyed by misapplying the Supreme Court decision. By giving recognition and directives, the lower courts did what the Supreme Court deliberately refused to do on April 4, 2025. They declared a winner. They altered the status quo. They turned judicial restraint into judicial action. On April 4, 2025, Nigeria’s highest Court reminded us that courts must exercise restraint where party constitutions provide internal mechanisms. The principle was to prevent forum shopping and judicial overreach. Both the Lifu order and the Appeal Court’s “doctrine of necessity” reasoning stand in direct tension with that guidance. This creates a dangerous contradiction. The Supreme Court is the final custodian of its own pronouncements. Only it can reconcile the record and ensure the April 4, 2025 judgment is applied as intended: hands off internal leadership, unless a clear constitutional breach is shown. Here, no such breach was proven, only competing claims that deliberately shifted attention away from the sanctity of the 2024 Owerri LP convention to the issue of claiming INEC leadership recognition within the party.
Fourth, the need to protect the ordinary people against the elites. The LP was founded, funded by workers, students, and market people. They have legitimate expectations that it will not be taken from them through technical court orders.
If the judiciary becomes the route for late-coming rich and powerful elites to bypass party structures, we incentivize litigation over organisation. That kills grassroots democracy. The Supreme Court has always guarded against that in many landmark political cases past and recent; it chose substance over technicality and the people over powerful interests.
Why this matters to ordinary Nigerians now:
Going by the Supreme Court landmark decision of April 4, 2025, courts are not allowed to choose party leaders. If not, no party is safe and democracy will be in danger as the future of any political party can be re-written in a courtroom.
The ordinary Nigerians, the owners of LP, now look up to the judges again with honour, respect and with hope that they will consider all grounds of the new appeal awaiting ruling holistically: the Lifu order; the doctrine of necessity; how April 4, 2025 Supreme Court ruling was misapplied and the helpless situation of LP proprietors – the ordinary people now at the mercy of powerful late comer elites.
The issue at stake is not about Abure or Nenadi but the Constitution. The judges should pick the law; set aside orders that overreach; reaffirm jurisdictional limits. Most importantly, reaffirm that by not openly declaring the national chairman’s seat vacant on April 4, 2025 the Supreme Court intended the status quo ante to remain until the party’s internal organs, procedures and processes are reorganised to decide otherwise.
•Esomonu Writes from Owerri
