The Senate has said there will be no fresh amendment to the Electoral Act 2026 before the 2027 general elections, insisting that the law as it stands will govern the coming polls despite questions raised by a recent Supreme Court judgment.
The position was set out by the Chairman of the Senate Committee on Media and Public Affairs, Yemi Adaramodu, in an interview with Journalist. He said the National Assembly had completed its electoral reform work and would not reopen the law in the middle of election preparations.
According to Adaramodu, the reform was concluded, passed and assented to, and is already in use. He argued that any review could only be considered after the 2027 elections, if the need arose. “How do you halt an Electoral Act that is already in use for a new one? We are not going to do that,” he said, adding that it was through the same Act that parties produced the candidates who will contest the polls.
His comments followed the Supreme Court judgment of 24 September 2026, which restored four provisions of the Act that the Court of Appeal had earlier voided. A seven-member panel led by Justice Adamu Jauro held, in a unanimous decision, that Sections 77(5), 77(6), 77(7) and 84(2) were not inconsistent with the 1999 Constitution.
The provisions deal with how parties pick candidates. Sections 77(5) and 77(6) restrict voting and candidacy at primaries to members listed on the register a party submitted to the Independent National Electoral Commission, and bar the use of any other register. Section 77(7) provides that a party that fails to submit its register within the stipulated period cannot field a candidate, while Section 84(2) limits nomination to direct primaries or consensus.
The restored register must have been submitted to INEC at least 21 days before a primary. The judgment set aside the Court of Appeal ruling of 16 July 2026, which had struck down the sections after a challenge by the Zenith Labour Party, and reinstated an earlier Federal High Court decision. The apex court also awarded two million naira in costs against the party. The appeal, brought by INEC, was marked SC/CR/495/2026.
The ruling has unsettled parts of the political field because it reopens the question of whether every candidate’s nomination complied with the restored rules. The Supreme Court, however, drew a line between an individual’s qualification to contest and whether the candidate’s party met the legal requirements for nomination, and made no finding against any named candidate.
Several parties have moved quickly to say their tickets are safe. The Peoples Democratic Party, the Allied Peoples Movement and the Labour Party all maintained that the judgment does not invalidate their candidacies. The Nigeria Democratic Congress took the same line in defence of its presidential candidate, Peter Obi, his running mate, Rabiu Kwankwaso, and the former Deputy Senate President, Ovie Omo-Agege. Its National Publicity Secretary, Osa Director, said the ruling should not be reduced to individual interpretations, and that anyone contesting a candidate’s eligibility should go to court.
Senior lawyers have differed on how far the judgment reaches. In separate assessments after the ruling, some Senior Advocates of Nigeria argued that because the provisions were part of the Act from the point of enactment, their validity now stands affirmed at the highest level, and could be invoked against any participant whose nomination falls short of Sections 77 and 84. That reading, rather than the text of the judgment itself, is the source of much of the current anxiety.
INEC’s own response is still taking shape. The commission received the certified true copy of the judgment and has been weighing how to apply it, with indications that it may revisit aspects of the candidates’ list it had already published. Its position matters because the electoral timetable is well advanced. The commission issued the Notice of Election in February 2026 and has fixed 16 January 2027 for the presidential and National Assembly elections and 6 February 2027 for the governorship and state assembly polls. Eighteen presidential candidates were cleared for the contest.
For now, the law stands as the Supreme Court has restored it, and the Senate has made clear it will not be changed before the vote. Whether the restored provisions translate into actual challenges against particular candidates will depend on the evidence any petitioner can bring, and on how the courts treat such suits once filed. Those are matters still to be tested, not settled outcomes.