By Joy Odor Reportcircle News
Barely six weeks to the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Area Council elections, Nigeria’s electoral umpire has pushed back forcefully against claims that it deliberately sidelined the Labour Party, framing the dispute as a legal quagmire rooted in unresolved leadership wars and serial litigation.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on Tuesday said it could not lawfully issue access codes to enable the Labour Party upload candidates for the February 21, 2026 council polls, insisting that the party’s internal crisis already settled at the Supreme Court has left it without a recognised leadership structure.
The clarification followed a protest on Monday, January 5, when Labour Party supporters besieged INEC headquarters in Abuja, accusing the Commission of exclusion and demanding immediate access to the candidate nomination portal.
But INEC’s account tells a longer, more complicated story.
According to the Commission, the Labour Party has been locked in leadership disputes since 2024, a crisis that reached its legal climax on April 4, 2025, when the Supreme Court ruled unequivocally that the tenure of the Julius Abure-led National Executive Committee had expired.
The apex court’s judgment, delivered in Usman v. Labour Party, effectively stripped the Abure faction of legal standing.
Despite that ruling, INEC said the same faction went ahead to conduct primaries for the August 16, 2025 bye-elections and the forthcoming FCT Area Council elections actions the Commission described as legally defective.
When INEC excluded the party from the bye-election, the Abure-led faction headed to the Federal High Court in Abuja.
That case, decided on August 15, 2025, ended in another loss for the party, with the court affirming the Supreme Court’s position and endorsing INEC’s decision to bar the faction from participating.
What followed, INEC said, was a cascade of lawsuits across multiple courts, all seeking the same relief: a court order compelling INEC to issue access codes for candidate uploads.
From the Nasarawa State High Court in Akwanga to the Federal High Court in Abuja, and then to two separate divisions of the FCT High Court, the Labour Party pursued parallel actions some stalled, others still pending.
The most dramatic twist came on December 16, 2025, when the FCT High Court sitting in Life Camp issued an ex parte interim order directing INEC to upload Labour Party candidates.
But the order, INEC noted, was explicitly time-bound and lapsed after seven days.
The Commission challenged the suit’s competence and jurisdiction, and the order expired on December 23 without renewal.
“As things stand today, there is no subsisting court order directing INEC to issue access codes or upload Labour Party candidates,” the Commission said.
INEC stressed that the matter remains sub judice, with cases still pending before the Federal High Court and the FCT High Court, Jabi Division, where a motion is scheduled for hearing on January 15.
Against that backdrop, the Commission said it would not be swayed by street protests or political pressure, insisting it must wait for final judicial pronouncements.
The statement underscores INEC’s attempt to walk a tightrope between a fast-approaching election timetable and Nigeria’s notoriously slow judicial process.
It also throws fresh light on the risks political parties face when internal democracy collapses into prolonged legal warfare.
With the February 21 poll drawing closer, the Labour Party’s fate in the FCT may now hinge less on popular mobilisation and more on whether it can first resolve, in court, the question of who truly speaks for the party.
