Mohammed Haruna Evokes Zamfara Ruling

Could Nigeria be heading towards another Zamfara moment? That is the question hanging over the 2027 elections after the Supreme Court restored the provisions of the Electoral Act 2026 dealing with party membership registers and nominations.

The warning has come from an unlikely place: INEC itself. Mohammed Haruna, the National Commissioner, raised concerns about another Zamfara episode.

Dozens of candidates could be affected, including Donald Duke, who is running for president under PRP; Isah Pantami in Gombe; Kingsley Chinda in Rivers; and Mohammed Adamu in Nasarawa, all of whom are governorship candidates of various parties.

And there are possibly hundreds more running for legislative seats from smaller parties.

Based on information on INEC’s website, the 22 political parties fielding candidates for the general elections have submitted their membership registers. The website doesn’t include the submitted membership register of the parties in question.

But whether the names of these candidates are on those registers is known only by the commission and the parties that submitted them.

Haruna suggested that political parties whose candidates secured tickets after the submission deadline for membership registers, or outside the three-week window before party primaries, would not be allowed to replace their candidates.

He cited the Zamfara episode as a precedent for such a move. In 2019, the Supreme Court disqualified the APC in Zamfara from the electoral contest after ruling that the party had failed to conduct valid primaries.

The disqualification, however, came after the party had participated in the elections and declared winners in most of the contested seats by INEC; a politically and emotionally devastating blow.

Every APC candidate in the state was affected, and the votes cast for the party were treated as wasted votes.

It was worse for Celestine Omehia, who in 2007 had been sworn in as Rivers governor only for the Supreme Court to declare him the wrong candidate. And in 2019, the Court disqualified all APC candidates in Rivers, almost a carbon copy of the Zamfara ruling.

In February 2020, the Supreme Court removed APC governor-elect David Lyon less than 24 hours before his inauguration.

These precedents explain why today’s controversy is bigger than a dispute over paperwork.

They raise another question. Is today’s Supreme Court still willing, and institutionally able, to exercise the same independence displayed in Rivers, Zamfara, and Bayelsa when the consequences fall on the governing party?

But the Court has already spoken on the law. It has restored Section 77.

The next test is whether INEC will apply that law uniformly to the ruling APC, the PDP, and every smaller party, and whether the courts will scrutinise the evidence without fear or favour.