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Supreme Court · 2008
Who is the candidate at an election — the political party or the individual on the ballot?
What you are reading
Every case here is a real, reported Nigerian decision. What we publish is our summary of it in plain language. We do not print a law-report volume and page, because a citation that leads nowhere is worse than no citation at all — and we will not have this platform be the source of one.
This decision is reported in the Nigerian law reports. Locate it by its case name in a law report series or through the court's own record, and read the judgment before relying on it.
The question the court actually had to answer. Everything a judgment settles flows from this, and nothing beyond it does.
Who is the candidate at an election — the political party or the individual on the ballot?
A person who had won his party's primary was substituted before the election, and another candidate was returned.
The substitution was challenged as having been made without the justification the law required.
The Supreme Court held the substitution invalid and treated the winner of the primary as the party's candidate.
It reasoned that at an election it is the political party that contests, with the candidate standing in its name.
Stated narrowly, as the case is genuinely cited for — not stretched into the broader proposition it is often summarised as.
It is the party that contests an election; a candidate validly nominated cannot be substituted except as the law permits.
Our explanation of what the decision means for an ordinary reader. It is not the judgment.
The decision is famous for a result that surprised people — a man who was not on the ballot was declared entitled to the office, because in law the party contested the election and he was the party's candidate.
The practical lesson is that what happens inside a party's primary has legal consequences outside it, and the courts will look at whether the party followed its own and the law's requirements.
The part most summaries leave out, and the part that most often causes a case to be cited for something it never decided.
Named generally. Read the official text of any instrument you intend to rely on.
This decision is reported in the Nigerian law reports. Locate it by its case name in a law report series or through the court's own record, and read the judgment before relying on it.
Subject area: Electoral Law