When Institutions Normalize Illegality: Why INEC Must Appeal the Lokoja Judgment By Umar Ardo, Ph.D

•PhD. Umar Ardo 

There are moments in the life of a republic when the issue before it appears narrow, technical, even procedural - yet beneath the surface lies a constitutional question capable of shaping the future character of the state itself. Nigeria may now be confronting one of those moments. 

2. The controversy surrounding the registration of the Nigerian Democratic Congress (NDC) by order of the Federal High Court, Lokoja, is not fundamentally about one political association. It is about whether constitutional requirements still matter in Nigeria, or whether institutions may selectively suspend legality whenever convenience, pressure or political calculations demand accommodation.

3. At the center of this controversy lies a simple but unavoidable question: can an association that did not comply with the constitutional and statutory requirements for political party registration nevertheless become a political party by judicial pronouncement alone? The answer ought to be self-evident.

4. Section 222 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended), together with Section 78 of the Electoral Act, 2022 and INEC’s Guidelines and Regulations, establish mandatory requirements for political party registration. These provisions are not ornamental. They are constitutional safeguards designed to preserve the integrity of Nigeria’s electoral order. Compliance is not discretionary. It is foundational.

5. Yet the facts surrounding the NDC matter raise grave constitutional concerns. Incontrovertible evidence indicates that NDC did not complete - and indeed may never have even properly commenced - the legally prescribed registration process required by law. This then means the entire basis upon which the Lokoja judgment rests becomes constitutionally defective, thus placing the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) in a position of extraordinary constitutional responsibility. INEC is not an ordinary litigant. It is not merely another government agency participating in adversarial proceedings. Under Section 153 of the Constitution, INEC is the constitutionally designated guardian of the integrity of political party formation and electoral regulation in Nigeria. Its obligations transcend procedural compliance with court orders. It owes a higher duty to the Constitution itself. This distinction is critical.

6. Since I first raised this issue on February 6th, many pundits have argued that once a court delivers judgment, INEC’s duty ends with obedience. That proposition is both legally and morally incomplete. Obedience to judicial orders and the decision to challenge such orders through lawful appellate mechanisms are not mutually exclusive obligations. A public institution may comply with a judgment while simultaneously exercising its constitutional right - and indeed responsibility - to appeal a manifestly erroneous decision. The failure to do so, especially where constitutional infractions are apparent on the face of the record, as it is in the case of the NDC, transforms institutional neutrality into institutional complicity.

7. That is precisely why a legal action seeking an *Order of Mandamus* to compel INEC to appeal the Lokoja judgment becomes not merely permissible, but arguably necessary. As opined by legal luminaries, Mandamus exists precisely for moments like this where public institutions decline to perform duties essential to constitutional governance. The proposed action would not ask the court to register or deregister any party directly. Rather, it seeks to compel INEC to discharge its constitutional responsibility by challenging a judgment that has manifestly sanctioned illegality. This distinction matters profoundly.

8. The issue is not whether courts possess authority over INEC. They do. The issue is whether constitutional requirements can be bypassed entirely through litigation without compliance with the substantive obligations imposed by law, as in the present case of the NDC. If this precedent is tolerated, then political party registration ceases to be a constitutional process and becomes instead a strategic exercise in forum shopping and judicial engineering. And once institutions learn that constitutional prerequisites may be circumvented without consequence, the damage rarely remains confined to the original controversy.

9. Every unlawful act condoned establishes a precedent beyond itself. The exception, once tolerated, gradually becomes the norm. What begins as an isolated accommodation evolves into institutional culture. This is how republics decay - not always through dramatic coups or overt authoritarianism, but through the quiet normalization of procedural illegality by elites who persuade themselves that temporary expediency justifies permanent damage to constitutional order. 

10. There exists a peculiar moral inversion in politics: the very class entrusted with safeguarding state institutions - intellectuals, bureaucrats, journalists, political actors and institutional leaders - often become their most sophisticated dismantlers. Not through open rebellion against the law, but through accommodation of its violation. The process is subtle. An unlawful act is rebranded as pragmatism. Constitutional requirements become “technicalities.” Institutional silence is marketed as stability. And gradually, legality itself becomes negotiable. This is not ordinary hypocrisy. It is something more dangerous: the privatization of public conscience.

11. When elites legitimize illegality because it temporarily serves their political interests, they unintentionally teach society that law possesses no intrinsic authority beyond immediate power calculations. The lesson absorbed by ambitious actors is devastatingly simple - constitutional rules are not binding principles; they are obstacles to be suspended whenever sufficiently influential interests desire suspension. The tragedy, however, is that the very elites who normalize such exceptions rarely understand that they are constructing precedents that future actors will inherit and weaponize against them. The exception never remains selective.

12. Once constitutional safeguards become discretionary, nobody retains permanent control over how those discretionary powers will later be exercised. The machinery of illegality, once legitimized, eventually consumes even those who initially benefited from it. That is why the present controversy matters far beyond the fate of the NDC. What is at stake is whether Nigeria remains governed by constitutional processes or whether institutional actors may quietly redefine legality according to convenience while expecting the public to continue believing in the integrity of democratic institutions. Nations are not destroyed only by those who openly violate the law. They are often weakened more profoundly by those who possess the authority to resist illegality yet choose accommodation instead.

13. A republic survives only when institutions retain the courage to say no - especially when saying no is inconvenient. INEC still possesses that opportunity. By appealing the Lokoja judgment, the Commission would not be undermining judicial authority. On the contrary, it would be strengthening constitutionalism by permitting superior courts to clarify fundamental questions regarding the mandatory requirements for political party registration. That is how constitutional democracies correct error: not through institutional silence, but through lawful appellate scrutiny.

14. But if INEC refuses to act despite possessing knowledge of apparent constitutional defects, then citizens may rightly ask whether the Commission still understands the full weight of its constitutional obligations. The law cannot defend itself. Institutions must defend it. And when institutions refuse, citizens are left with no option except to return to the courts - not merely to vindicate legal technicalities, but to defend the very principle that constitutional rules must mean what they say. 

15. Thus, the proposed mandamus suit against the Independent National Electoral Commission is not merely a technical legal dispute about the registration of a political party. Nor is it a political mischief targeted at certain political actors. Properly viewed, it is a profound constitutional argument about whether institutions in Nigeria still possess the courage to defend the law when expediency demands silence. A nation is built by those willing to defend permanent principles against temporary temptations. It is lost by those who forget the difference. That is why it is necessary to get the Lokoja judgment appealed against!