The Independent National Electoral Commission has provisionally cleared a former Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, Prof. Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, and the New Nigeria Democratic Congress governorship candidate in Kano State, Abdulsalam Gwarzo, to contest the 2027 elections, with their eligibility tied to the outcome of pending court cases.
The decisions were reached at the commission’s meeting on Thursday, held to consider complaints from political parties and candidates whose names were left out of the lists published ahead of the elections, according to a source at the commission. The commission had no objection to the two candidacies, the source said, but the pending legal proceedings could still affect the final outcome.
INEC officials did not immediately respond to questions on the development, and the commission has yet to publish the decisions in an official statement.
Pantami’s path to the ballot has been one of the most closely watched primary disputes of the cycle. He emerged as the Peoples Democratic Party governorship candidate in Gombe State after leaving the All Progressives Congress on May 19. One of his rivals for the ticket, Ahmed Mailantarki, challenged the primary in court, and a Federal High Court in Gombe nullified the exercise and ordered a fresh primary, which Pantami won again.
His biggest hurdle came from a different direction. A September 24 judgment of the Supreme Court restored Sections 77(5), (6), (7) and 84(2) of the Electoral Act 2026, provisions that bar parties from fielding candidates whose names were not in the membership register submitted to INEC within the stipulated time. The ruling followed a long-running dispute over how strictly the commission may enforce the register rule.
On the strength of that judgment, INEC dropped Pantami’s name from the final list of governorship candidates for Gombe State, even though he had appeared on the provisional list published on August 29. A National Commissioner of the commission, Mohammed Haruna, had earlier said that, in line with the Supreme Court ruling, some parties would not field candidates in 2027.
Thursday’s decision reverses that position for now. In Gombe, Pantami’s supporters took over major streets on Thursday night to celebrate the news.
The commission, however, shut the door on another excluded candidate. It rejected a petition by the Peoples Democratic Party governorship candidate in Ogun State, Ladi Adebutu, who had asked it to review his exclusion from the list of candidates.
The two rulings land on opposite sides of the same question: whether a candidate dropped over the membership register rule can still run. For Pantami, the answer is a provisional yes that a court case can overturn; for Adebutu, the answer was no. The distinction the commission has drawn, if it explains it publicly, will matter to every party that lost a candidate to the register rule.
The decisions also deepen a legal fog that will hang over several governorship races until the courts settle them. The register provisions, restored by the Supreme Court barely five weeks ago, have already knocked candidates off lists across the states, and any of those disputes can still reach the ballot. Pantami and Gwarzo cleared the commission’s review on Thursday, but their names carry a condition no candidate wants: the election is fixed, the campaigns are moving, and the last word is not yet theirs.