An Abuja Federal High Court has ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission to accept the nomination of candidates of the Labour Party in 24 states either manually or through its electronic nomination portal.
Delivering judgment in the suits brought before him by the party on Thursday, Justice Inyang Ekwo held that INEC violated sections 31, 33 and 36 of the Electoral Act 2022 by rejecting the Labour Party’s candidates.
The party had in November 2022 carried out substitution nominations for its candidates who withdrew from the 2023 general election in some states.
The party through its National Chairman and National Secretary communicated the withdrawals to INEC.
The party also gave notification of the October 27 date to conduct substitution nomination primary elections.
However, rather than upload the fresh candidates’ names, INEC claimed that its nomination portal was faulty and declined to accept the candidates list manually.
The 24 affected states are: Ogun, Kwara, Plateau, Nasarawa, Lagos, Bayelsa, Oyo, Benue, Bauchi, Akwa Ibom and Ekiti.
Others are Katsina, Kaduna, Niger, Rivers, Sokoto, Ebonyi, Gombe, Borno, Osun, Adamawa and Cross River, among others.
The court held that the evidence of the Labour Party exchanging letters with INEC was credible and proceeded to attach probative value to it and that the Labour Party should not be made to bear the effect of a non-functional electronic nomination portal.
Agreeing with the LP that nomination and submission of candidates list cannot be rejected by INEC until 90 days to the general election, the Justice stated that the time the Labour Party sought to submit a list of its candidates in the 24 states was more than 90 days to the 2023 general election, and thus was within time permissible by law.
Justice Ekwo ordered INEC to open its website to allow the Labour Party to submit a list of its candidates or accept the list manually.
Reacting over the judgement in Abeokuta, the State Legal Counsel, Monday Mawah and the Acting National Publicity Secretary, Abayomi Arabambi described the rulings as unprecedented.
Mawah said “Today is a very historical day for us as a party and me as an individual. Today, some very historical judgment or landmark judgement was delivered in our favour.
“Labour party now has legislative candidates in 36 of Nigeria and we appeal to the people to vote massively for us because the alternative they have been looking for is in our party.”
On his part, Arabambi said “Well, we are fully ready, we are obedient compliant and by the grace of God.
“Now, there are a lot of issues, rumour that has been pending around that labour party doesn’t have candidates. I think today, we have been able to silence all our critics that we now have all our senators, our Reps and Assembly candidates in all the 36 States of the federation.”
