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By Henry Efe Duku, Esq.

The conscience and consciousness of the electorate of Delta Central Senatorial District are settled that the All Progressives Congress (APC) committed a grave injustice and self-inflicted harm when it annulled the widely acknowledged landslide victory of the Deputy President of the 9th Senate and Obarisi of Urhoboland, Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, CFR, in its senatorial primaries of 18th May, 2026. As confirmed by credible and unchallenged evidence gathered by professional and citizen journalists across all 85 wards of the district, the Obarisi won emphatically, polling 109,516 votes against a paltry 7,698 for his rival, Senator Ede Dafinone. Yet, pandering to Governor Sheriff Oborevwori’s endless, bitter and unwinnable declared war to retire Omo-Agege, along with other steadfast leaders of the old APC bloc and their legions of fiercely loyal supporters, from politics for the ‘offence’ of daring to challenge him in the 2023 governorship election, the field organisers of the primaries brazenly refused to accept and record the authentic results. This was made possible chiefly by an Urhobo-hater-in-chief who fears that the Obarisi’s return to the Senate would weaken her present unlimited control of the destiny of the Urhobo Nation, exercised through docile, servile and uninformed minds.

Following the targeted impunity that attended the APC primaries, a principled Omo-Agege responded decisively and calmly, migrating his tested grassroots political machinery to the new Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), having carefully laid the groundwork beforehand. As a first consequence, he comfortably secured the NDC’s senatorial ticket for Delta Central, strategically upending Oborevwori’s comically boastful sterilisation agenda to ‘cage and padlock’ the Obarisi and his people as retired lame ducks in a kitchen-led APC. It was an uppercut to Oborevwori’s demigod posturing that grew, in part, from a poor reading and misconstruction of the text and spirit of Nigeria’s extant electoral laws. For the Obarisi, this was a well-planned strategy, driven by an incisive understanding of the law and a blend of Sun Tzu and Machiavellian tactics. As it should, the audacity of the move has altered Delta’s 2027 electoral calculus, with seismic effects extending well beyond his own race. All options are now effectively on the table, and Delta Central’s traditionally republican, anti-oppression electorate is gearing up to withstand squarely whatever rigging schemes lie ahead.

The Obarisi’s methodically executed embrace of the NDC has, as expected, prompted diverse commentaries, including some legal analyses that are, with profound respect, factually and legally misconceived and flawed for being predicated on wrong facts, conjectures, and a poor appreciation of today’s electoral legal framework governing political party primaries and the nomination of candidates in Nigeria. Through it all, a consensus is growing that Omo-Agege’s principled exit from an APC that panders to oppressive inclinations and eliminates its own quarterbacks has further consolidated his standing as a leader with clear convictions on the true spirit of electoral democracy.

A significant place to start is to note that the APC, of its own accord, chose to secure written withdrawals from aspirants in each electoral race before the primaries. To all intents and purposes, therefore, no aspirant was in law an aspirant before, during or after the primaries, each having withdrawn from the race and deposed to a statement on oath affirming that withdrawal, unless otherwise affirmed by the party with the aspirant’s express consent. This may not apply to aspirants who defied the party, but if Omo-Agege complied with this condition imposed by the party, then he was as free as the air to exit the party at any time and contest on any other platform within the window allowed and conditionalities prescribed by law. Indeed, on this footing, even his participation in the APC primaries could, in law, amount to no more than an academic, hypothetical exercise. This has to sink.

Some analyses have suggested that joining the NDC after participating in the tainted APC primaries may breach the law. This is not correct. Which law? Omo-Agege’s movement to the NDC is firmly anchored on strong wickets of the law; like the Rock of Gibraltar, he is unshakable. The question that arises for consideration is this: subject to permissible, lawful constraints, does the law, as presently constituted in Nigeria, prohibit a qualified citizen from subscribing to the membership of a different political party in order to protect and advance his political rights, where those same rights are demonstrably violated in his own party? As hinted already, some analyses have given the wrong impression that the answer to this key question is a simplistic ‘yes’. That position is unsupported by any good law

To start with, Section 40 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended), in its supremacy, guarantees a citizen the fundamental right to ‘… belong to any political party … for the protection of his interests’. The Constitution does not require a citizen to sit pitiably frozen in a party where his interests or rights are permanently, disdainfully violated. A citizen’s right to belong to any party of his choice is constitutionally protected, and no law exists, nor is it thinkable that one could lawfully exist tomorrow, in opposition to Section 40 of the Constitution. This is trite law, finding expression in a plethora of judicial decisions, including the recent case of Mene-Okotie v. Pan Ocean Oil Corp. Ltd. (2025) 15 NWLR (Pt. 2009) 471, where the Supreme Court reaffirmed that “[t]he Constitution is superior to the laws made by the National Assembly and the lower legislatures. … It is very prime in our law that every law or regulation to be applied or enforced in Nigeria must accord with the dictates of the Constitution ….”

It should also be said that joining a ‘new’ party to advance one’s political interest is not among the constitutional “disqualification criteria” emphasised in Section 85 of the Electoral Act, 2026. It is not the law that an aspirant who participated in the primaries of one political party is, by that fact alone, disqualified from participating in the primaries of, or from being nominated as a candidate by, another party, subject to mandatory conditions weighing in the aspirant’s favour. As the Supreme Court stated in Jime v. Hembe (2023) 12 NWLR (Pt. 1899) 463, “[t]here is a vast difference between participation at the primaries and being actually nominated by a party. The processes are quite different.” Unless duly nominated by a party, an aspirant is free to move to another party to advance his political interest, provided, as said, other equities favour him. Indeed, in Jime (supra), Kekere-Ekun, JSC (now CJN), clarified that “… there is no provision in the Electoral Act that precludes a candidate from participating in more than one primary. What is forbidden is his nomination by more than one political party at the same time and to his knowledge.” Nothing more needs to be added.

Although nothing relating to dual party membership factually, reasonably applies to the Most Distinguished Senator Ovie Omo-Agege, it should nevertheless be mentioned that, pursuant to a bill sponsored by its leader, Rt. Hon. Julius Ihonvbere, the House of Representatives, on 11th March 2026, initiated an amendment of Section 77 of the Electoral Act. The amendment seeks to add subsections (8), (9) and (10) to the section to prohibit, void and criminalise dual party membership, thereby clearly confirming the absence of such provisions, and of their intent, in the extant law. The process, however, remains inchoate, having not received the Senate’s concurrence, let alone presidential assent. Any contention to the contrary is wrong.

Maybe it should also be said, regarding the amendment, that the views of many lawmakers, including Rt. Hon. Hassan Fulata, who is vastly experienced in electoral reform, were jettisoned during the clause-by-clause consideration of the bill by the House’s Committee of the Whole. Fulata had reasonably contended that the amendment, as couched, strips an alleged offender of membership in both parties once dual registration is merely alleged, and that this itself violates the offender’s constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of association under Section 40 of the Constitution. That argument may yet prove the Achilles’ heel of this unfinished amendment if it is ever fully passed and ultimately tested in court.

Relatedly, it has been insinuated that the former Deputy President of the Senate may have run afoul of Section 77(4) of the Electoral Act 2026, which requires a political party to submit its membership register to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) no later than 21 days before the date fixed for its primaries. For those who advance this view, if Omo-Agege’s name appears on the register submitted by the NDC to INEC, there must be a violation termed ‘double membership’. It must be firmly stated that no such violation exists in today’s Nigerian electoral law. Rather, and as already noted, what the law frowns upon is ‘multiple nomination’, provided for in Section 35 of the Electoral Act 2026 as follows: “Where a candidate knowingly allows himself to be nominated by more than one political party or in more than one constituency, his nomination shall be void.” As couched, ‘multiple nomination’ is not even an offence per se. At best, it is an intentional procedural breach that attracts an administrative penalty in the form of a void nomination, and nothing more.

By subsections 77(3), (4), (5) and (6) of the extant Electoral Act, the law as it stands today in relation to party primaries only mandates a political party to maintain a digital membership register; issue membership cards to its members upon registration; submit its membership register to INEC not later than 21 days before the date fixed for its primaries; allow only those members whose names appear on the submitted register to participate in its primaries; and use only the submitted register for those primaries. Under subsection 77(7) of the Act, a party that fails to submit its register as prescribed is ineligible to field candidates for election. That is all the law provides on a party’s membership register; anything else is imaginary and undue hair-splitting, not law. Nowhere does the law say that a citizen whose party elects to be reckless with its primaries must remain helpless, rather than take lawful steps to effectuate his constitutionally guaranteed right to freedom of association.

Accordingly, any suggestion that Omo-Agege’s membership of the NDC may be tainted because he did not personally delist his name from APC’s membership register before registering with the NDC is both spurious and untenable in logic and law. The germane question is who bears the reasonable and lawful duty to delist a resigned member’s name from a party’s register: the party or the resigned member who has no access to the register? Does the law command the impossible? Without access to the party’s digital register, it cannot be the duty of the resigned member to delist his own name from that register. This is simple logic.

For absolute clarity, it should also be added that Senator Omo-Agege’s movement to the NDC has nothing whatsoever to do with the recent judgments of the Federal High Court in Suits Nos. FHC/ABJ/CS/517/2026 and FHC/ABJ/CS/720/2026, filed by the Youth Party (YP) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP) respectively, which focused heavily on the powers of INEC with respect to election timelines and administrative guidelines for the 2027 general elections. Nothing in the decisions already rendered by the Court, or in the ongoing appeals arising from them, relates to the Obarisi situation.

Finally, Senator Omo-Agege’s case is in a class of its own and is compliant with the law in all material respects. Omo-Agege is OK!

• Henry Efe Duku, lawyer and political commentator, writes from Abuja._