APC Candidate List: Understanding the Difference Between a Primary Election Result and a Final Party Nomination.

By Wale Obanigba, Esq.
Friday July 3, 2026.

The controversy surrounding the All Progressives Congress (APC)’s submission of its National Assembly candidates to INEC has generated divergent legal opinions. My learned friend, Banji Okunomo, Esq., contends that once a returning officer declares an aspirant the winner of a primary election, the political party is irrevocably bound by that outcome and cannot alter it before submitting its candidates to INEC. With respect, that interpretation overlooks an important distinction between the declaration of a primary election result and the completion of the party’s nomination process.

A party primary is not necessarily concluded simply because a returning officer announces a winner. Where a political party’s constitution and primary election guidelines provide for a post-primary appeal mechanism, the nomination process continues until the Primary Election Appeal Panel has considered complaints arising from the exercise and the party’s National Working Committee (NWC) has taken a final decision on the panel’s recommendations. It is only upon the completion of that internal process that the party determines its final nominee for submission to INEC.

The existence of an Appeal Panel is not a mere formality. It is a safeguard established to ensure that disputes arising from the conduct of primaries are resolved before the party presents its final list of candidates. To argue that the declaration of a returning officer is final in every circumstance would render the appeal process meaningless and defeat the purpose for which it was created.

This is where the Electoral Act must be carefully understood. Section 29 regulates the submission of candidates by political parties to INEC. It is at that stage that a political party formally presents its nominated candidates. Before such submission, the party is entitled to complete every stage of its internal nomination process in accordance with its constitution and primary election guidelines.

Likewise, Section 33 restricts the withdrawal or substitution of candidates after a political party has submitted the name of its candidate to INEC, except in the circumstances permitted by law. The section presupposes the existence of a candidate whose name has already been forwarded to INEC. It should not be interpreted as preventing a political party from concluding an appeal process recognised by its own rules before making that submission.

Accordingly, an aspirant cannot automatically claim that his or her candidature has been unlawfully substituted under Section 33 where the party has not yet submitted that aspirant’s name to INEC. Until the party completes its internal nomination process and forwards its final list, what exists is an ongoing nomination exercise rather than a completed statutory nomination.

It is equally important to distinguish INEC’s monitoring role from the party’s internal decision-making process. The Electoral Act empowers INEC to monitor party primaries to ensure compliance with the law. However, INEC’s monitoring report does not replace or nullify the internal appeal procedures established by political parties. Where those procedures are validly invoked, the party is entitled to conclude them before arriving at its final nominee.

This is not an argument that political parties possess an unrestricted power to change candidates at will. They do not. Rather, it is an argument that where a party’s constitution and guidelines lawfully provide for an appeal process, that process forms part of the nomination exercise. The party’s final decision, reached before submitting its list to INEC, cannot automatically be described as an unlawful substitution simply because it differs from the initial declaration made by a returning officer.

The Electoral Act should therefore be read as a whole, not in isolated provisions. Its objective is to protect the integrity of party nominations while recognising the autonomy of political parties to regulate their internal affairs within the framework of the law. If the APC Primary Election Appeal Panel lawfully reviewed petitions arising from the primaries and the National Working Committee acted on those recommendations before the party submitted its final list to INEC, the legal issue is not whether a different name eventually emerged. The real question is whether the party complied with both the Electoral Act and its own constitution and guidelines in arriving at that final nomination.