Election campaign in Nigeria: Nigeria's opposition in the clutches of the judiciary

Nigeria's opposition is in a race against time. Presidential and parliamentary elections are scheduled to take place at the end of January 2027, followed by elections in the 36 states in February - but now that the judiciary has declared the leadership of the two main opposition parties illegal, it is completely unclear how President Bola Tinubu's opponents want to prevent his re-election. And Tinubu's ruling party APC (All Progressives Congress) is accused of stoking tensions.

Last Thursday, Nigeria's Federal High Court in the capital Abuja completely dismantled the opposition ADC (African Democratic Congress). The court declared the entire ADC party leadership illegitimate due to irregularities in its election and canceled all of the over 1,500 candidatures submitted by the ADC to the Electoral Commission, chief among them that of presidential candidate Atiku Abubakar.

Abubakar is a veteran of Nigerian politics. The former vice president of Nigeria under the first freely elected president after the end of military rule, Olusegun Obasanjo (1999-2007), has unsuccessfully run for the highest state office six times, the last three times for Obasanjo's party PDP (Peoples Democratic Congress), which ruled Nigeria until 2015 and has been the largest opposition force ever since. In 2025, Abubakar resigned from the PDP and joined the ADC, Nigeria's third largest party.

But this caused a leadership dispute in the ADC. Long-time party leader and founder Ralph Nwosu resigned to pave the way for a large opposition coalition including Abubakar. A provisional party leadership under David Mark, a retired general and long-time Senate president, took over the party and submitted Abubakar's candidacy for the presidential election. But the deputy of the resigned Nwosu, Nafiu Bala Gombe, does not recognize Mark as the new ADC leader and sees himself as the legitimate party leader. He went to court – and won.

The ADC leadership has described the verdict as “another desperate attempt” by the ruling party APC to crush the opposition. “We warn the APC: do not play with a fire you cannot control,” ADC spokesman Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi said. "The peace and stability of Nigeria are more important than the ambitions of a president and a party. No one should be so desperate that they endanger the entire country to maintain their own power. This is not a time to play games with stability."

Atiku Abubakar directly accused President Bola Tinubu of influencing the judiciary. “No manipulation, mind game or web of lies can erase our place in this election, silence our campaign or deprive Nigerians of the right to decide their future,” the 79-year-old said. “We are on the ballot and the people must be able to decide.”

The ruling party disagrees. APC spokesman Felix Morka said they had nothing to do with the ADC’s ​​“legal mess”. “A party that cannot sort itself can never sort Africa’s most important country.”

Not only the ADC is in turmoil, but also Abubakar's former party PDP, still the main opposition in the institutions. An appeal court has upheld an earlier Federal High Court ruling that supporters of controversial former party chief Nyesom Wike form the legitimate PDP leadership and not Kabiru Turaki's rival faction that actually controls the party.

Nyesom Wike, long-time governor of Rivers State in the oil-rich Niger Delta, was defeated by Atiku Abubakar in the PDP presidential primaries in 2023 and then refused to support the PDP campaign for Abubakar. He joined President Tinubu's government as Capital Minister after the elections without resigning his PDP membership.

Now his loyalists have prevailed in court, which if implemented would effectively make the PDP an appendage of the government. PDP leader Turaki, who was declared irregular by the judiciary, made combative statements at the weekend. “Under me, the party leadership will continue to fight to save the party from those who want to destroy it,” he said at a meeting of PDP state governors.

PDP and ADC both want to go to the Supreme Court now. The ADC now also wants to take this step. This leaves the two main opposition parties preoccupied with themselves, warns commentator Auta Ibrahim. "The opposition is overwhelmed by internal leadership squabbles that have migrated from party offices to courtrooms. The opposition's chances of achieving anything in the 2027 elections have plummeted."

There are fears that these processes could cause instability. The Situation Room, an umbrella organization of civil society groups that monitors the election campaign, has counted over 500 violent incidents during the election campaign so far, with 27 deaths so far. Intimidation, hostilities are increasing and political freedom is shrinking, the group said at the end of last week. “Political violence must not determine who is allowed to run an election campaign, who is allowed to run and whose votes count.”