On Friday 4th April, 2025, the Supreme judgment against the Abure-led leadership of the Labour Party caused lots of confusion within and outside the party as to whether the primary election scheduled to hold the next day was to proceed as planned or rescheduled, considering what will likely become the legal implications of a leadership no longer recognized by the court to be the ones conducting a political process of immense magnitude such as a primary election.
What was the Supreme Court’s judgement?
The Supreme Court’s judgment states that the lower courts were wrong to have declared Barr. Julius Abure the incumbent Chairman of the Labour Party. The reason is that the the lower courts lacked jurisdiction to entertain the case in the first instance, and was wrong to have gone ahead to pronounce Abure as still being the Chairman. The Supreme Court unanimously went further to admonish political parties to adhere to their constitution and that leaders of political parties who’s tenure have expired must have to leave office. Also, the Supreme Court emphasized that leadership disputes are a party’s internal affair and not justiciable in court.
With this development, one would have expected the Abure-led leadership of the Labour Party to reschedule the primary so to create time for internal party meetings and resolutions to take place but surprisingly, it chose to still go ahead to carry out the primary election the next day.
After the Supreme Court ruling on Friday, the Labour Party’s two aspirants, Mr. John Nwosu and Dr. George Moghalu made different decisions as to if they were going to submit themselves to the primary election the next day. For Mr. John Nwosu, he chose to formally withdraw and dissociate himself from being a part of that primary election citing amongst his reasons, the Supreme Court’s judgment as well as perceived irregularities and illegalities as regards the delegate’s congress not meeting up to the party’s constitutional requirements nor INEC guidelines and regulations. For Dr. George Moghalu, he chose to go ahead with the now very contentious primary election as it’s sole aspirant. Dr. George Moghalu was eventually declared winner but one still wonders if he made the right call. Some might say it’s because of opportunism or desperation. Others might say it’s part of politics but isn’t legality also part of politics?. With the Labour Party’s contentious primary election having been conducted some hours after a Supreme Court judgement, it remains to be seen how the Labour Party’s stakeholders and caretaker committee headed by Sen. Nenadi Usman will make amends to prevent the party from plunging into a major legal crisis as the main election starts. Also, for INEC not recognizing the Abure led leadership, one wonders what will be the the party’s exposed loopholes that the other political parties might legally exploit if the flag bearer of this contentious primaries were to win the main election or if the Labour Party itself would wish to challenge in court the results of the November 8th Anambra State governorship election.
We might be seeing a similar repeat of what transpired in the 2021 Anambra State governorship election whereby the Supreme Court eventually went on to void the APC’s then flag bearer (Sen. Andy Uba) for having emerged from an illegal and non-existent primary election.
All eyes are now on the Labour Party’s hierarchy as to how the lingering leadership dispute and subsequent Supreme Court judgement will be managed in a way so not to negatively impact the party’s chances of winning the governorship main election.
