THE Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has rejected the presidential nomination of former President Goodluck Jonathan submitted by the Kabiru Turaki-led faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), insisting that candidate nominations can only be made through its designated electronic portal.
News Point Nigeria reports that the development followed the insistence by the Turaki-led camp on Friday that it had manually submitted Jonathan’s presidential nomination and the names of its other candidates for the 2027 general election to the electoral commission, further deepening the PDP’s protracted leadership crisis.
Responding to the claim, INEC’s Director of Voter Education and Publicity, Victoria Eta-Messi, stated that the commission does not accept candidate nominations submitted outside its officially approved electronic platform.
“Submission is only done on a dedicated portal as stipulated by our regulations and guidelines please,” she said.
However, the National Publicity Secretary of the Turaki-led faction, Comrade Ini Ememobong, maintained that the committee resorted to manual submission after INEC allegedly refused to provide the access codes required for electronic filing.
According to him, the access codes were merely an administrative convenience and not a legal requirement under the Electoral Act.
“Notwithstanding INEC’s refusal to provide us with the necessary access codes… we have successfully submitted, manually and in full compliance with the Electoral Act 2026, the list of candidates sponsored by the authentic Peoples Democratic Party,” Ememobong said.
He further stated that the submission, which included Jonathan’s presidential nomination as well as all governorship, National Assembly and State Assembly candidates sponsored by the committee, was acknowledged by INEC despite the ongoing disagreement over recognition of the faction.
Ememobong warned the electoral commission against publishing any list of candidates different from the one submitted by his committee, insisting that the group would pursue every available constitutional and legal remedy to protect what it described as the authentic structure of the PDP.
“Should the Commission publish names other than those lawfully submitted by us… we are exhausting every constitutional, legal and democratic avenue to ensure that our Party is not hijacked or annexed to the ruling party,” he said.
Tracing the origin of the party’s leadership crisis, Ememobong explained that the PDP’s Board of Trustees (BoT) and a requisitioned meeting of the National Executive Committee (NEC) constituted an Interim National Working Committee (NWC) after a Supreme Court judgment allegedly left the party without a legally recognised national leadership.
He argued that INEC’s refusal to acknowledge the interim leadership despite formal notification compelled the party to seek judicial intervention.
Ememobong also criticised a subsequent judgment of the Federal High Court on the matter, describing it as an attempt to relitigate issues that had already been settled by superior courts.
“The judgment… reads more like an appeal on the judgment of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal. It is clearly inconsistent with the extant decisions of the Supreme Court and the Court of Appeal that form the foundation of our case,” he said.
He disclosed that the party had already appealed the judgment and would also challenge what it described as discrepancies between the judgment delivered in open court and its Certified True Copy (CTC).
The PDP chieftain further accused INEC of abandoning its constitutional neutrality in handling the internal dispute.
“The Commission’s actions have regrettably reinforced the growing public perception that it is no longer acting with the impartiality expected of the nation’s electoral umpire,” he alleged.
He also claimed that the commission withheld material facts during court proceedings involving the PDP and ignored congresses it had monitored.
Ememobong further alleged that the PDP’s internal crisis formed part of a broader agenda aimed at weakening opposition parties and entrenching one-party dominance in Nigeria.
“We were the pioneer target for opposition dismantling and capture… but it has now spread to almost all the opposition parties,” he said.
Calling on Nigerians to defend the country’s multi-party democratic system, Ememobong warned that unchecked electoral authoritarianism could undermine Nigeria’s democratic consolidation.
Expressing confidence that his committee would ultimately prevail, he reiterated his warning that, “We were the pioneer target for opposition dismantling and capture… but it has now spread to almost all the opposition parties,” insisting that the trend posed a serious threat to genuine political competition in the country.