Two Months Before Voting, a Court Knocked Atiku Off Nigeria's Ballot

Sixty days. That is how long Nigerians have before they queue at polling stations on 16 January to choose the man who will govern Africa's most populous nation. Yet a judge in Abuja has already stripped one of the country's most seasoned politicians of his candidacy. Ask yourself why a democracy would let a courtroom decide who gets to run before a single vote is cast.

On Thursday, the Federal High Court in Abuja ruled that the leadership of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) was illegally constituted and voided the presidential candidacy of Atiku Abubakar. The ADC is one of the three major parties contesting the election. It has said it will appeal, and it has accused the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) of involvement in the case. Atiku called the timing "no coincidence." The ruling came a single day after he launched his campaign with a rally in Sokoto State. Peter Obi, the former governor of Anambra State, called the decision "shocking." He is right to be shocked. Any Nigerian who has watched this country's politics for more than a decade should be.

Let us be precise about what happened and what did not. The APC's spokesman, Daniel Bwala, says his party "is not involved at all" in the suit that produced Thursday's ruling. That denial deserves to be tested in open court, not dismissed or accepted on faith. What we can document is a pattern. Earlier this year, the federal government backed a separate case challenging the ADC's eligibility to contest the 2027 vote. That lawsuit claimed the party had failed to meet constitutional requirements. An appeals court overturned it. Now a second case has landed on the ADC's leadership, and the consequence is the same: the main challenger's name is removed from the ballot. When one legal front collapses and another opens in its place, citizens are entitled to ask who is holding the doors.

Consider what this means on the ground. Nigeria enters this election with a troubled economy, families struggling to afford basic food, and insecurity that has, by many accounts, never been worse. A coup trial has only just opened. Nigerians are living with banditry in the north-west, kidnapping along major highways, and a state that too often cannot protect them. These are the conditions under which citizens most need a real choice at the ballot box. Instead, the campaign has limped along since August, and the legal battles against the opposition have, as critics note, improved the ruling party's chances. A contest where the incumbent benefits from every courtroom delay is not a contest. It is a managed outcome dressed up as an election.

The stakes are also regional. If Atiku cannot run, the election will feature no major candidate from the north, the region that produced some of Nigeria's most consequential leaders and whose voters have long insisted on fair representation. In a country where regional balance is so politically sensitive, pushing the North's most prominent contender off the ballot is not a technicality. It is a fuse. Nigeria has lived through civil war, through disputed elections, and through the grim memory of 2011 and 2015, when political violence claimed lives across the country. Every African leader who treats elections as a legal chess match should remember what happens when losers conclude that the system has no room for them.

This is the wider African disease. Across the continent, we have seen incumbents rewrite constitutions, disqualify rivals on technicalities, and postpone votes indefinitely. The tools change: a decree here, a court filing there, an electoral commission that answers to the palace. The result is always the same. Citizens lose faith, and the people with the most power to change things stop believing that change is possible. Africa did not win its independence from colonial masters so that our own elites could replicate the colonial habit of deciding the outcome in advance.

There is a better way, and Africa has already shown it. In early 2024, Senegal's President Macky Sall attempted to postpone a presidential election. Senegal's Constitutional Council struck the postponement down, and the country voted. Its voters then chose a new leader in a peaceful transfer of power. Ghana handed power from one party to another after a 2024 election that its institutions managed with credibility. Botswana, for decades, has changed governments through the ballot without bloodshed, and it has built one of the most stable economies on the continent through strong property rights, transparent institutions, and an independent judiciary that has earned public trust. These are the building blocks of a free and prosperous Africa. None of them requires a foreign benefactor. All of them require political will and an insistence that the rules apply to the powerful as much as to the powerless.

So what must Nigeria do? First, its courts must act with speed and independence. Pre-election disputes over party leadership and candidate eligibility should be resolved on a fixed, short timetable, decided on the record, and insulated from political pressure. Judges who rule on such matters must be selected through transparent processes and protected from reprisal. Second, the Independent National Electoral Commission must demonstrate, in public, that it answers to the constitution and to voters, not to any party. Its handling of candidate lists should be open to scrutiny by observers, journalists, and the parties themselves. Third, Nigeria's political parties need internal democracy rules that prevent leadership disputes from becoming weapons. A party that cannot run its own affairs transparently should not be able to hand a rival a legal knife. Finally, civil society, the Nigerian Bar Association, and the business community have a role to play. Investors do not want to build factories in a country where elections can be quietly cancelled by a filing. Lawyers and citizens' groups should document every ruling, every filing, and every delay, and publish them so that the public can judge for itself.

And what should Nigerians demand? Demand that every candidate who meets the constitutional requirements stays on the ballot until a competent court, reviewing the full record, decides otherwise. Demand that the ADC's appeal be heard quickly and fairly. Demand that the APC answer, under oath and in court, the specific allegations of involvement. Demand that INEC publish its timetable and its legal position in plain language. And demand that no Nigerian be told their vote is meaningless because someone else has already decided the result.

We are the ones who will live with this outcome. Our children will inherit whatever democracy we defend or surrender in the next sixty days. Do not let a judge's signature be the last word on your future. Speak up, organize, and watch every step of this process with the eyes of people who know what a stolen election costs. Nigeria deserves a ballot that belongs to its voters.

Based on reporting by RFI