Obasanjo, Obi Renew Call for Political, Judicial Reforms
Two of Nigeria’s most prominent political figures, former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Nigeria Democratic Congress presidential candidate Peter Obi, used a democracy forum in Bauchi on Tuesday to press for structural changes to Nigeria’s political and judicial institutions, reviving a debate that recent data on gender representation, electoral litigation and party defections suggests has grown more, not less, urgent since the country’s return to civilian rule in 1999.
The two spoke at the 2026 Goodluck Jonathan Foundation Democracy Dialogue, held in the Bauchi State capital under the theme “Beyond Elections: Can Political Parties and the Judiciary Save African Democracy?” Obasanjo, who chaired the event, argued that Nigeria’s winner-takes-all, first-past-the-post system was a poor fit for the continent’s political culture, describing it as an imported framework that turned political rivals into enemies rather than partners in governance. He suggested African countries needed to design systems reflecting their own history and values rather than continuing to operate what he likened to an ill-fitting garment.
Obasanjo’s remarks on gender exclusion are borne out by Nigeria’s own electoral record. Since the return to democracy on May 29, 1999, none of Nigeria’s 36 states has elected a woman as governor, and no woman has been elected president or vice president in any of the Fourth Republic’s seven general election cycles. Research compiled on women’s political participation shows that female representation in the National Assembly has never exceeded nine seats out of 109 in the Senate in any legislative session since 1999, a proportion that has remained largely static even as the country’s population and voter roll have expanded.
The closest Nigeria has come to electing a female governor was in Adamawa State in March 2023, when APC candidate Aishatu “Binani” Dahiru was briefly announced winner by a Resident Electoral Commissioner before the declaration was withdrawn following the cancellation of results from 69 polling units, where more than 37,000 registered voters could not cast ballots. The final collation showed incumbent Governor Ahmadu Fintiri of the PDP defeating Dahiru by a margin of 31,249 votes. The episode remains one of the most closely examined near misses in the history of Nigerian gender politics.
Against that backdrop, the Labour Party’s April 2026 national convention in Umuahia produced a milestone of its own: the election of Senator Nenadi Usman, a former Finance Minister, as the party’s substantive national chairman, making her the first woman to head a major Nigerian political party. Usman had earlier chaired the party’s caretaker committee following a leadership dispute that was resolved in her favour first by the Federal High Court in January 2026 and then, on appeal, by a unanimous Court of Appeal ruling in April 2026.
Obi, addressing the same forum, turned his criticism toward the judiciary, the legislature, the legal profession and religious institutions, alleging that each had contributed in different ways to weakening Nigeria’s democratic safeguards. He referenced his own experience contesting the outcome of the 2023 presidential election at the Court of Appeal, where a panel of judges he said he had never previously met ruled in his favour on procedural matters, and used that experience to draw a contrast with what he described as growing judicial partisanship. He also criticised recent amendments to electoral law that he said removed forgery as an offence in electoral matters, and accused some senior lawyers of defending clients accused of certificate forgery.
Obi’s remarks come against the backdrop of a separate but related controversy this year: the June 2026 Federal High Court order, later overturned by the Court of Appeal in July, directing the Independent National Electoral Commission to deregister the African Democratic Congress and four other opposition parties over alleged non-compliance with Section 225A of the Constitution. That episode, which briefly threatened to remove ADC presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar’s party from the 2027 ballot before the appellate court restored its registration, has fuelled wider debate about the role of Nigeria’s courts in adjudicating politically sensitive party matters ahead of the general election.
Labour Party chairman Nenadi Usman used the Bauchi forum to invoke the example of former President Goodluck Jonathan’s concession of defeat in the 2015 presidential election, in which he conceded to Muhammadu Buhari before final results from the Independent National Electoral Commission had been fully collated and announced, a decision widely credited by election observers with helping Nigeria avoid the kind of post-election violence that had followed earlier disputed transitions. Usman argued that the willingness of the current field of 2027 presidential aspirants to make similar sacrifices for national stability remained untested.
She also pointed to her party’s structural links with organised labour, noting that the Nigeria Labour Congress and the Trade Union Congress, Nigeria’s two umbrella labour federations representing millions of unionised workers across both public and private sectors, are constitutionally recognised members of the Labour Party, a relationship she argued gave the party an organisational base unmatched by rival opposition platforms.
Taken together, the statistics assembled from Nigeria’s twenty-seven years of continuous civilian rule point to a democracy that has expanded procedurally, in the number of registered parties, the frequency of elections and the volume of electoral litigation, while remaining largely unchanged on measures of inclusion, particularly for women, and increasingly contested on questions of judicial neutrality in high-stakes party registration and leadership disputes. With the 2027 general election cycle already generating court battles over party registration, leadership recognition and candidate eligibility, the themes raised at the Bauchi dialogue, institutional design, judicial independence and inclusive representation, are likely to remain live issues rather than settled history between now and the next polls.
The dialogue was attended by former President Goodluck Jonathan, former Vice President Namadi Sambo, Bauchi State Governor Bala Mohammed, former Senate President Anyim Pius Anyim, former Plateau State Governor Jonah Jang, APC Deputy National Chairman (South) Ben Nwoye, and the Emir of Bauchi, Rilwanu Suleiman Adamu.