2027: Opposition Hit by Court Rulings, Internal Feuds
Six months before Nigerians return to the polls, the parties hoping to unseat the ruling All Progressives Congress are spending as much energy in courtrooms and boardrooms as they are on the campaign trail. A run of conflicting judgments, unresolved leadership tussles and open allegations of intimidation has left the opposition looking fractured at exactly the moment it needs to present a united front against President Bola Tinubu’s re-election bid.
The Independent National Electoral Commission has fixed January 18, 2027, for the presidential and National Assembly elections, with governorship and State Assembly polls following on February 6. That timetable now sits uneasily beside a legal landscape that keeps shifting under the opposition’s feet.
The most striking blow landed on June 26, 2026, when Justice Isah Dashen of the Federal High Court in Lokoja set aside his own December 10, 2025, judgment that had compelled INEC to register the Nigeria Democratic Congress, the platform on which former Anambra governor Peter Obi intends to run. The judge held that the earlier ruling was constitutionally defective because it was delivered without hearing the Peace Movement Party, which claimed ownership of the logo relied upon in the case. Counsel to the PMP, Chikezie Ekeocha, said the effect was sweeping, telling journalists that “the recognition of the Nigeria Democratic Congress, the issuance of its certificate of registration, its inclusion in INEC’s records, and any appearance on ballot papers arising from that judgment must be withdrawn pending the final determination of the substantive suit.”
The reversal reopened old questions about how the NDC entered the register in the first place. Ahead of 2027, INEC received 110 applications from associations seeking to become parties, a figure that later climbed to 171. Only 14 associations survived the preliminary screening, and the NDC was not among them. INEC chairman Prof. Joash Amupitan confirmed in February that just one association, the Democratic Leadership Alliance, had fully met the constitutional and statutory conditions, yet the commission registered the NDC anyway in compliance with the Lokoja order, a case decided in about 32 days. The party has said it remains a legal entity and will challenge the reversal at the Court of Appeal.
Against that backdrop, Obi has grown visibly uneasy. Speaking on a podcast hosted by Chude Jideonwo, he alleged sustained hostility from officials at the federal and state levels since he declared his ambition, and went as far as raising fears for his personal safety. “Every single thing I do for a living, this government is frustrating it. Deliberately, everything,” he said, warning that the atmosphere of fear was deepening ethnic divisions. He framed his campaign as an attempt to heal a polarised country, saying he wanted to “bring back unity where there’s division.”
The turbulence extends well beyond the NDC. The African Democratic Congress, adopted as the flagship of a broad opposition coalition, has been dogged by its own leadership crisis and rival factions trooping to INEC and the courts. The Social Democratic Party endured nearly a year of parallel conventions and competing claims before the commission, acting on Supreme Court judgments, updated its records on June 17 to recognise Prof. Sadiq Gombe as national chairman, dropping the expelled Shehu Gabam. Gombe formally reclaimed the party secretariat days later, declaring the dispute settled, though the episode showed how easily internal disputes can consume a party’s pre-election year.
Compounding matters, INEC has withheld the operational codes needed by the NDC and five other parties whose registrations remain contested, among them the ADC, Accord Party, Action Alliance, African Action Congress and Zenith Labour Party, leaving their standing in limbo.
The NDC reversal has also revived a technical debate that could shape the coming appeals. Lawyers are divided over whether a court that has delivered final judgment, and become functus officio, can properly revisit it. Legal practitioner Clinton Ejenavi argued that the doctrine leaves little room, insisting that “the only recognised exceptions are when the judgment was obtained by fraud, nullity ab initio, breach of fair hearing, or the slip rule.” He added that a party seeking to appeal outside the statutory window “cannot do so as of right,” since “once the prescribed period lapses, leave of court is mandatory.”
Other lawyers see more nuance. Pius Danba Pius held that the Lokoja court could set aside its ruling on grounds such as lack of jurisdiction, fraud or want of service, and that the NDC still had options if it could secure a stay of execution. Constitutional lawyer Okueyelegbe Maliki noted that an appeal against a final Federal High Court judgment must ordinarily be filed within three months, and that “after six months, an appeal would ordinarily be statute-barred unless the Court of Appeal grants condonation.” Former Benue Attorney General Dr Alex Adum questioned whether the PMP, as an unregistered association, could establish the locus standi to reopen a concluded matter at all.
For now, the practical consequences are clear enough. With the substantive NDC suit starting afresh, INEC awaiting the certified true copy of the judgment before taking a position, and coalition partners still settling scores among themselves, the opposition heads into the decisive stretch before 2027 carrying unresolved questions about who will even appear on the ballot. Whether these disputes are cleared in time, or harden into a lasting split, may prove as consequential to the outcome as anything said on the stump.