Senior Advocates of Nigeria and former Resident Electoral Commissioners of the Independent National Electoral Commission have expressed divergent opinions over whether aspirants who lost party primaries can defect to another political party and still contest elections under the Electoral Act 2026.
The differing opinions followed recent judgments of the Federal High Court on the interpretation of provisions relating to party membership registers, timelines for submission to the INEC and the legality of aspirants moving between political parties after participating in party primaries.
As political parties conclude their primaries based on INEC guidelines, some of the aggrieved members have dumped their parties and joined another.
A former member of the House of Representatives and two-term senator for Abia Central senatorial zone, Nkechi Nwaogu, dumped the ruling All Progressives Congress following the outcome of the APC primaries, where her closest rival, Emeka Atuma, was declared the winner.
In a telephone interview on Thursday, she confirmed that she had left the APC for the Nigeria Democratic Congress.
