Akpabio’s Blueprint for Defeated Senators: A reckless assault on electoral laws and party rules, by Abubakar M. Kareto
The recent remarks credited to the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, suggesting that the Senate leadership is working to secure tickets across party lines for incumbent senators who lost their bids, deserve serious democratic scrutiny. The Electoral Act is explicitly clear on how a political candidate can legitimately emerge: it must be through either direct primaries or consensus agreed upon by the cleared aspirants. Any political manoeuvring aimed at bypassing these legally defined paths to smuggle in senators who have completely lost their primaries directly undermines the sanctity of internal party democracy. Such actions represent clear anti-party activities, paving the way for multi-legal litigations and an uncontrollable crisis within political parties.
When a candidate fails at the grassroots level, yet their name is magically swapped and substituted in Abuja, it cannot be called democracy. What do we call it when the rule of law is flagrantly subverted behind closed doors in the federal capital? It is nothing short of political fraud, administrative lawlessness, and a reckless assault on electoral integrity.
There is a critical legal aspect to this manoeuvre that many stakeholders and candidates are completely overlooking. Under Section 285(9) of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, an aggrieved aspirant has a strict window of only 14 days from the date of the primary election to file a pre-election matter in court to seek redress. Once that 14-day statutory period elapses, the window slams shut permanently. The case becomes statute-barred, leaving the shortchanged aspirant entirely without legal recourse, no matter how blatant the injustice.
This is the exact playbook behind Senate President Akpabio’s troubling assertions. It gives us a clear look at what is expected to unfold behind closed doors. Political parties are systematically taking advantage of this specific legal gap. Because parties like the APC, ADC, and NDC have intentionally delayed releasing the official lists of their candidates, they are running down the clock. For the APC, the 14-day window for the House of Representatives and Senate primaries has already quietly elapsed.
Worse still, these desperate substitution manoeuvres directly violate Section 77 and Section 115 of the updated Electoral Act. Section 77 mandatorily requires parties to submit their digital membership registers to INEC at least 21 days before any primary. An aspirant who lost cannot simply be smuggled onto another party’s ticket in Abuja because their name won’t exist on that party’s pre-submitted register. Attempting to override this through backroom swapping constitutes an illegal multiple nomination under Section 115, which carries severe punitive measures and outright disqualification for both the candidate and the party.
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This calculated silence means that by the time the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) officially publishes the final names of nominated candidates, the legal window for shortchanged aspirants to challenge the results will have already expired. Many legitimate winners who successfully clinched their tickets at the local government and senatorial district levels will be met with absolute shock. They will discover that their names were surreptitiously replaced in Abuja, and because the 14 days have passed, they will have absolutely no legal standing to fight back.
For Nigerian democracy to survive, the results of the local primaries must be respected. The leadership should focus on upholding the law, not cushioning the fall of defeated politicians through backroom manipulation and deliberate legal entrapment.
About the Author:
Abubakar M. Kareto is a public affairs analyst and political, governance and security commentator. He can be reached for engagements via email at amkareto@gmail.com or followed for real-time political insights on X (formerly Twitter) @amkareto.
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