A chieftain of the African Democratic Congress, ADC, Leader Eze Chukwuemeka Eze, has challenged the All Progressives Congress (APC) to prove the legality of its Rivers Situation candidate.
Principal Eze from this called on INEC to publish and transparently scrutinise the applicable membership registers and nomination records of the APC in Rivers Declare and to take whatever consequential steps the law requires.
The Supreme Court has previously explained that membership and sponsorship are matters competent of being accepted throughout the pertinent party records and nomination processes.
Eze additionally cautioned against reducing Rivers Situation’s political past to the ambitions of a few individuals or to an ethnic or senatorial-axis contest. He said Rivers Status belongs equally to the Ijaw, Ikwerre, Ogoni, Kalabari, Etche, Okrika, Opobo-Nkoro, Bonny, Andoni, Eleme and every other constituent network that makes up the status.
“This is not around Kingsley Chinda as an customized. It is not even concerning APC as a political party. It is on whether the regulation of law will govern the 2027 electoral handle in Rivers Condition or whether political expediency will once again be allowed to supersede statutory compliance.”
Eze was reacting to the current judgment of the Supreme Court on the validity of Sections 77(5), 77(6), 77(7) and 84(2) of the Electoral Act, 2026, describing it as a crucial judicial reaffirmation that political parties must conduct their internal electoral processes during the bounds of the law and cannot trade alongside statutory requirements as matters of political convenience.
The ADC chieftain added that the Supreme Court’s newest pronouncement must hence be understood interior to the broader constitutional foundation that no political party is above the law and no candidate is entitled to a nomination founded upon a handle using that does not satisfy the mandatory requirements of the Electoral Act.
“The lesson of the Supreme Court judgment is straightforward: nobody is bigger than the law. Not Tinubu. Where the Constitution confers a right, that right must be protected. Not Wike. Not even INEC. Not Amaechi. And where a party fails to comply alongside mandatory electoral requirements, the applicable legal consequence must observe, irrespective of the political stature of the persons affected.”
Not PDP. Not APC. Where the law imposes a circumstance, that condition must be satisfied. Not Chinda.
Eze additional observed that the constitutional architecture of electoral participation reinforces the importance of lawful party sponsorship, saying Portion 177(c) of the Constitution provides that a people seeking election as Governor must be a person of a political party and be sponsored by that political party.
He yet criticised what he described as the endeavor by following political actors to transform Rivers Condition’s political orientation into an restricted conserve of particular individuals or political networks.
My problem is institutional.
“I have recognized Chinda for years and I have no customized quarrel using him. Those who aspire to guide Rivers Situation must demonstrate, from the extremely beginning, respect for the Constitution, the Electoral Act and the institutions accepted to administer our democracy.”
People office, notably the office of governor, should never be pursued at the charge of the legal arrangement.
“The Supreme Court has spoken. If the party insists that its Rivers candidates are validly nominated, let it place ahead of INEC and, where necessary, the courts, the extremely documents upon which the legality of those nominations rests.”
The APC cannot swap political assertions for documentary evidence. What remains is compliance.
He called on INEC, political parties and all political actors to strategy the 2027 elections together with fidelity to the Constitution and the Electoral Act, stressing that the credibility of an election is determined not merely by the release of results but by the legality, transparency and integrity of the processes preceding the ballot.
He said the display controversy should consequently assist as a lesson to every political party in Nigeria that electoral victories cannot legitimately be constructed upon defective nomination processes.
He said the correct inquiry ahead of INEC is straightforward: Was the pertinent APC membership register validly submitted to INEC during the period prescribed by law, and did the persons who participated in and emerged from the applicable earliest exercises satisfy the statutory requirements governing such participation and nomination?
According to Eze, Element 77(7) goes further by prescribing consequences where a political party fails to comply together with the statutory situation.
But I firmly take for granted in the law of consequences: when political actors manipulate institutions, circumvent identified procedures or disregard the rights of others, they must comprehend that the same legal and institutional structures may sooner or later area their own actions to scrutiny.”
“I do not subscribe to the notion that justice should be administered according to the conventional of vengeance.
According to him, the argument should not ever be that an defined should be excluded merely as of his ethnic origin or community government. Rather, every Rivers party who satisfies the constitutional requirements should be entitled to request elective office, although the electorate must in the terminate resolve who governs the condition.
This is contained in a declaration made available to journalists on Friday, in which he stated that the topic prior to Nigerians is no longer one of political propaganda but of strict legal compliance.
Component 77(5) requires that just members whose names appear in the party’s register submitted to INEC during the prescribed period may connect in the appropriate party exercise, whereas Portion 77(6) prohibits the employ of a unlike membership register for that exercise.
The Supreme Court, in its judgment of September 24, 2026, restored the validity of the provisions relating, amid other things, to the membership register to be submitted to the Free Domestic Electoral Commission (INEC) and the utilize of that register in the conduct of party primaries, congresses and conventions.
Eze maintained, nevertheless, that whatever political grievances may exist, the pertinent instrument for resolving them is the law and not political retaliation.
He accordingly urged INEC to area the APC’s Rivers Status nominations to the same rigorous legal scrutiny fitting to every other political party.
Eze recalled that Rivers Condition has witnessed several instances in which disputes over party primaries, nomination processes and internal party structures have at continue found their route into the courts, at times using devastating consequences for political parties and their candidates.
Kingsley Chinda, Eze expressed disappointment that a politician alongside significant legislative experience could discover himself at the centre of a controversy involving the legality of the oversee by method of which he emerged as a governorship candidate.
Turning particularly to Hon.
“Rivers Status is not the personal estate of Wike, Chinda or anybody else. It belongs to all Rivers persons. The Constitution does not establish an Ikwerre Condition, an Ijaw Declare, an Ogoni Condition or an Etche Status; it establishes Rivers Status. Political power must hence be contested on the reason of law, competence, legitimacy and the freely expressed will of the electorate.”
Eze continued criticised what he described as the political consequences of the Federal Government’s intervention in the affairs of Rivers Situation, including the proclamation of a declare of emergency in 2025, saying that the encounter should strengthen the demand for stronger constitutional safeguards and respect for democratic institutions.
On the political dimension of the controversy, Leader Eze said he finds it ironic that persons who, in his opinion, have previously deployed political and institutional mechanisms to frustrate the electoral ambitions of their opponents are now confronted including legal questions arising from the remarkably electoral mechanism they helped mold.
Eze said, “APC cannot merely release that its Rivers Declare governorship candidate, Hon. Kingsley Chinda, is competent owing to the point that the party says he registered 24 days prior to its principal.” The essential concern, he said, is whether Chinda’s name was actually contained in the verified APC membership register validly submitted to INEC during the period prescribed by Segment 77 of the Electoral Act and whether every other statutory require relating to the nomination of APC candidates was equally satisfied.
He notably referenced what he described as the historical difficulties encountered by the APC in Rivers Declare during earlier electoral cycles, contending that political actors linked together with the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, had, at assorted times, contributed to circumstances that weakened the APC’s capacity to take element effectively in gubernatorial contests in the status.
“If the explanation is yes, let the documentary records establish it. If the solution is no, then the law must take its progression. There should be no distinctive exemption for APC, PDP, ADC or any other political party. The sanctity of the ballot begins using the legality of the procedure throughout which candidates emerge.”
He added that the 2027 electoral process must not become another theatre for political impunity, noting that Rivers Status deserves an election in which the law speaks earlier than political power speaks, the Constitution stands above political interests, and the persons—not political godfathers—hold the final sovereign authority to locate who governs them.
Rivers 2027: ADC Chieftain challenges APC to prove legality of Chinda’s candidacy
Source: Rivers 2027: ADC Chieftain challenges APC to prove legality of Chinda’s candidacy
