APC’s primary elections and Morka’s sound arguments
By Sẹhinde Ilẹgbusi
The controversy surrounding the All Progressives Congress (APC) National Working Committee’s (NWC) review of certain primary election results has generated considerable debate. Critics have described the exercise as an unlawful substitution of candidates after the primaries. However, a closer examination of the Electoral Act 2022, the APC Constitution, the Party’s Primary Election Guidelines, and established principles of Nigerian electoral law suggests that such criticism may be overly simplistic.
Whether the NWC acted lawfully depends not on the mere fact that changes were made, but on why they were made, how they were made, and whether they were made pursuant to lawful authority.
At the heart of the APC’s defence is the explanation offered by its National Publicity Secretary, Felix Morka. According to him, a party primary is not merely an event but a process. The voting conducted on the day of the primary is only one stage of that process. The process also includes the purchase of nomination forms, screening of aspirants, accreditation of delegates, conduct of voting, collation of results, declaration of winners, the filing of petitions by aggrieved aspirants, the work of appeal committees, and the review of those recommendations by the National Working Committee before the party submits its final list of candidates to INEC.
This position is not without legal foundation. Political parties are voluntary associations governed by their constitutions and nomination guidelines. The Electoral Act 2022 recognizes their right to conduct primaries in accordance with those internal rules. Where those rules establish appeal committees and vest review powers in the National Working Committee, the appeal process forms an integral part of the nomination exercise rather than a separate or extraneous procedure. In that sense, the primary process cannot truly be said to have ended merely because votes were counted and an initial declaration was made.
Morka further disclosed that the APC received more than 720 petitions from aspirants following the primaries. According to him, these petitions were carefully considered by appeal committees, whose recommendations were subsequently reviewed by the NWC before final decisions were reached. If that account is accurate, the NWC’s actions were not arbitrary replacements of candidates but the culmination of an internal dispute-resolution process established by the party’s governing rules.
The legal justification for the NWC’s intervention becomes even stronger where credible evidence shows that the original declaration of a winner was itself tainted by fraud or substantial irregularities. Consider a situation in which the votes announced in favour of a purported winner were not the actual votes cast by accredited delegates but were instead inflated, fabricated, or arbitrarily allotted to a preferred candidate. In such circumstances, the issue is fundamentally different from one of simple substitution.
A declaration founded on fraudulent vote allocation cannot be equated with a lawful nomination. If the declared result does not reflect the true votes cast, then the declaration itself is legally questionable. The National Working Committee could legitimately argue that it was not overturning a valid democratic choice but correcting an invalid declaration that had distorted the will of the delegates.
Indeed, Morka’s observation that “primaries are not infallible” is consistent with this reasoning. Electoral laws and party constitutions anticipate the possibility of mistakes, irregularities, and even fraud. That is precisely why internal appeal mechanisms exist. Their purpose is to ensure that complaints are investigated and genuine irregularities corrected before the nomination process is concluded.
Where an appeal committee, after hearing all affected parties, finds that results were manipulated or fictitious votes were allocated to a candidate, the NWC may, if empowered by the APC Constitution and Primary Election Guidelines, lawfully intervene. Such intervention is not an exercise of political discretion but an attempt to restore the integrity of the nomination process.
Critics often argue that once a winner has been declared, the party loses all authority to revisit the result. That proposition is too broad. It overlooks the distinction between correcting an unlawful declaration and arbitrarily replacing a lawfully nominated candidate. If the declaration itself resulted from fraud, substantial non-compliance with party rules, or manipulation of the voting process, then the correction is directed at the illegality rather than at the candidate.
Another issue frequently raised is the legal effect of uploading the original result to the INEC portal. Some contend that once the result has been uploaded, the matter is closed. That conclusion does not necessarily follow.
The upload of a primary result to INEC does not automatically validate an otherwise unlawful nomination. If the party’s internal appeal process was still lawfully ongoing and the APC Constitution and Guidelines empowered the NWC to review appeal committee findings before the nomination process was finally concluded, the party may argue that the earlier upload merely reflected the initial declaration and not the final lawful outcome of the primary. If the review was completed and the correction made within the time allowed by the Electoral Act and INEC’s Regulations and Guidelines, the NWC may lawfully submit the corrected result as the party’s authentic nomination.
Conversely, if the statutory deadline had expired or the NWC acted outside the powers conferred by the party’s constitution and guidelines, the correction would be vulnerable to judicial challenge. Thus, the legality of the review does not turn solely on whether an earlier result had been uploaded but on whether the review was undertaken within the framework of the law and before the nomination process had been legally concluded.
Ultimately, any court called upon to determine the validity of the NWC’s actions would likely ask several critical questions. Did the APC Constitution and Primary Election Guidelines authorize the review? Were the allegations of fraud or irregularities established by credible evidence rather than speculation? Were all affected aspirants given a fair hearing? Did the NWC act within the statutory timelines prescribed by the Electoral Act and INEC Regulations? Did the corrective action reflect the true votes cast by delegates, or was it itself arbitrary?
If satisfactory answers exist to those questions, the APC’s legal position becomes substantially stronger.
Accordingly, where the review process revealed that the original declaration of a winner resulted from fraudulent vote allocation, fictitious figures, or substantial non-compliance with the party’s rules, the NWC can persuasively contend that it did not unlawfully substitute candidates. Rather, it discharged its constitutional and organizational responsibility to ensure that the party’s eventual nominees emerged through a lawful, transparent, and credible process.
In the final analysis, Felix Morka’s assertion that “a primary election is a process, not an event” encapsulates the essence of the legal argument. If the appeal mechanism established under the APC’s internal rules was properly invoked, if credible evidence exposed manipulation of the original results, if the NWC acted within the authority granted by the party’s Constitution and Guidelines, and if the corrected nominations were submitted in compliance with the Electoral Act and INEC’s timelines, then the review of the May 2026 primaries is capable of being defended not as an unlawful substitution of candidates but as a lawful correction of an invalid declaration, undertaken to preserve the integrity of the party’s democratic nomination process.
This essay presents the strongest legal case that can be made from the facts and arguments you’ve described. It is important to note, however, that its ultimate persuasiveness in court would depend on the specific wording of the APC Constitution and Primary Election Guidelines, the evidence supporting the alleged irregularities, and compliance with the Electoral Act 2022 and applicable INEC Regulations.
– Arẹmọ Sẹhinde Ilẹgbusi is a Public Affairs Analyst based on Ondo State.
