By Maureen Okpe
The Federal High Court, Abuja, has upheld the decision of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to exclude candidates of the Labour Party (LP) from the forthcoming Area Council elections in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) scheduled for February 21.
In a judgment delivered on Wednesday, Justice Peter Lifu declined to compel INEC to accept or publish the list of candidates submitted by the Labour Party for the council polls. The court dismissed the suit marked FHC/ABJ/CS/2110/2025, filed by the party and some of its candidates, challenging their omission from INEC’s final list of contestants.
The Labour Party had argued that when INEC released the final list of candidates in September 2025, its duly nominated candidates were unlawfully excluded, while its party logo was also omitted from the list of political parties cleared to participate in the elections.
According to the plaintiffs, the party wrote separate letters dated September 8 and October 2, 2025, to the INEC chairman protesting the development, but received no response. The party maintained that unless the court intervened, it would be unfairly denied the opportunity to field candidates in the FCT Area Council elections.
However, Justice Lifu held that the suit qualified as a pre-election matter under the 1999 Constitution (as amended). He noted that although the suit was filed on October 7, 2025, the cause of action arose on October 22, 2025, when the alleged exclusion took effect.
The judge explained that Section 285 of the Constitution requires pre-election suits to be filed within 14 days of the occurrence of the cause of action.
He ruled that the plaintiffs’ failure to comply with this constitutional timeline deprived the court of the jurisdiction to entertain the case.Justice Lifu also observed that a similar suit involving the same parties was pending before a High Court in Nasarawa State, describing the development as an indication of forum shopping.
Consequently, the court dismissed the suit as statute-barred and refused all the reliefs sought by the Labour Party and its candidates.
INEC had earlier justified the exclusion of the Labour Party from the FCT Area Council elections on the grounds of the party’s lingering leadership crisis, which it said made it impossible to recognise a valid and lawful list of candidates.