*Produce Membership Register To Settle The Argument, Declares ADC Chieftain, Eze
PORT HARCOURT— The Supreme Court has had its say. Now, insists Chief Eze Chukwuemeka Eze, the ruling party must produce its paperwork.
Reacting to the apex court’s judgment of 24 September 2026, which restored the validity of Sections 77(5), 77(6), 77(7) and 84(2) of the Electoral Act 2026, the African Democratic Congress (ADC) chieftain and former National Publicity Secretary of the defunct New People’s Democratic Party (nPDP) has rounded on the APC with a demand it will find distinctly uncomfortable: prove it.
In a statement made available to the media in Port Harcourt, Eze said the quarrel in Rivers State is no longer one of political propaganda but of strict legal compliance — and that the APC cannot simply announce that its governorship candidate, Hon. Kingsley Chinda, is qualified merely because the party says he registered 24 days before its primary.
“The critical question is whether Chinda’s name was actually contained in the verified APC membership register validly submitted to INEC within the period prescribed by Section 77 of the Electoral Act, and whether every other statutory requirement relating to the nomination of APC candidates was equally satisfied,” he said.
“The Supreme Court has spoken. What remains is compliance. The APC cannot substitute political assertions for documentary evidence. If the party insists that its Rivers candidates are validly nominated, let it place before INEC and, where necessary, the courts, the very documents upon which the legality of those nominations rests.”
It is a bracing demand from a man who has spent years watching Nigerian political parties treat statutory requirements as though they were optional extras — and who clearly believes the APC has been chancing its arm.
Section 77(5) permits only members whose names appear on the party register submitted to INEC within the prescribed period to take part in the relevant party exercise. Section 77(6) forbids the use of any other register. Section 77(7) attaches consequences to failure. Eze’s argument is that these are not suggestions to be negotiated in a back room; they are conditions to be met on paper, in date order, before a single ballot is cast.
He further noted that Section 177(c) of the Constitution requires a governorship candidate to be a member of a political party and to be sponsored by it, and that the Supreme Court has previously held membership and sponsorship to be matters capable of proof through the relevant party records.
“This is not about Kingsley Chinda as an individual. It is not even about APC as a political party. It is about whether the rule of law will govern the 2027 electoral process in Rivers State or whether political expediency will once again be allowed to supersede statutory compliance.”
Eze was pointed about the state’s history of primary and nomination disputes finding their way into the courts, “sometimes with devastating consequences for political parties and their candidates,” and called on INEC to subject the APC’s Rivers State nominations to precisely the same rigorous scrutiny applied to every other party.
Was the relevant register validly submitted within the period prescribed by law? Did those who participated in, and emerged from, the primaries satisfy the statutory requirements? Those, he said, are the only questions that matter.
“If the answer is yes, let the documentary records establish it. If the answer is no, then the law must take its course. There should be no special exemption for APC, PDP, ADC or any other political party. The sanctity of the ballot begins with the legality of the process through which candidates emerge.”
There was, too, a whiff of poetic justice in his tone. Eze observed with some relish that those who have, in his contention, previously deployed political and institutional machinery to frustrate their opponents’ ambitions now find themselves entangled in legal questions arising from “the very electoral system they helped shape” — a system, he added, in which actors associated with the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, had at various times contributed to circumstances that weakened the APC’s own capacity to compete in Rivers State gubernatorial contests.
He was careful, however, to insist that vengeance is no substitute for justice.
“I do not subscribe to the idea that justice should be administered according to the principle of vengeance. But I firmly believe in the law of consequences,” he said. “When political actors manipulate institutions, circumvent established procedures or disregard the rights of others, they must understand that the same legal and institutional structures may eventually subject their own actions to scrutiny.”
Turning to Chinda himself, Eze expressed disappointment that a politician of such substantial legislative experience should find himself at the centre of a controversy over the legality of his own emergence.
“I have known Chinda for years and I have no personal quarrel with him. My concern is institutional. Public office, particularly the office of Governor, should never be pursued at the expense of the legal order.”
And he took a scourge to the notion that Rivers State is a family inheritance to be parcelled out between rival networks.
“Rivers State is not the private estate of Wike, Chinda or anybody else. It belongs to all Rivers people. The Constitution does not establish an Ikwerre State, an Ijaw State, an Ogoni State or an Etche State; it establishes Rivers State.”
He rebuked those who would reduce the contest to ethnicity or senatorial axis, naming the Ijaw, Ikwerre, Ogoni, Kalabari, Etche, Okrika, Opobo-Nkoro, Bonny, Andoni and Eleme communities among those with an equal claim on the state — and he pointed to the 2025 declaration of a state of emergency in Rivers State as evidence of why firmer constitutional safeguards and sturdier democratic institutions are long overdue.
Then came the passage the APC will least enjoy reading.
“The lesson of the Supreme Court judgment is simple: nobody is bigger than the law. Not APC. Not PDP. Not Wike. Not Amaechi. Not Chinda. Not Tinubu. Not even INEC. Where the law imposes a condition, that condition must be satisfied. Where the Constitution confers a right, that right must be protected. And where a party fails to comply with mandatory electoral requirements, the appropriate legal consequence must follow, irrespective of the political stature of the persons affected.”
Eze closed by demanding that INEC publish and transparently scrutinise the APC’s relevant Rivers State membership registers and nomination records, and take whatever consequential steps the law requires.
The 2027 contest, he warned, must not become another theatre of political impunity.
“Rivers State deserves an election in which the law speaks before political power speaks, the Constitution stands above political interests, and the people — not political godfathers — retain the final sovereign authority to determine who governs them.”
The APC had not responded to the allegations at the time of going to press.
