Insights on Federal High Court (pre-election) practice directions (amendment), 2026, By Wahab Shittu

Insights on Federal High Court (pre-election) practice directions (amendment), 2026, By Wahab Shittu

Why Pre-Election Litigation Cannot Afford Delay

Nigerian election law treats pre-election disputes — nomination, disqualification, false declarations as to qualification, and complaints touching the conduct of party primaries — as matters that must be resolved before, not after, the ballot. Section 285(9) of the Constitution requires that every pre-election suit be filed within 14 days of the event complained of, while Section 285(10) obligates the court to deliver judgment within 180 days of filing. On appeal, that timeline is stretched further by Section 285(11) and (12). Set against Section 29(1) of the Electoral Act, 2026, which requires political parties to submit their list of nominated candidates not later than 120 days before election day, and Section 88(4), which forbids any court from halting a primary or a general election pending litigation, the arithmetic is unforgiving. A qualification challenge filed close to a primary can easily outlive the electoral calendar itself if the trial court does not move with dispatch. The 2026 Amendment is best read as an attempt to close that gap procedurally, since the legislature has left it structurally open.

The most immediate innovation is access. Paragraph 6 directs that court registries across all Judicial Divisions be open on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays, between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., exclusively for the filing of pre-election matters. Given the 14-day filing window under Section 285(9), a rule that closed the registry over a weekend could, in practice, extinguish a litigant’s cause of action. Opening the registry converts a constitutional right of access into a practical one.

On commencement, Paragraph 7 retains originating summons as the vehicle for pre-election suits, using Forms 3, 4 and 5 of Appendix 6 to the Federal High Court (Civil Procedure) Rules, 2019, but adds a safeguard for contested facts: where a party alleges fraud, forgery, or other highly contentious facts, the parties must file written depositions in addition to affidavits, and those depositions may be cross-examined. This is a sensible concession to the reality that originating summons procedure, built for undisputed facts, sits awkwardly with allegations of forgery or fraudulent primaries — issues that have often turned pre-election cases into disguised trials. The same Paragraph also requires litigants challenging the conduct or outcome of party primaries to join all necessary parties at the outset, a change discussed in greater depth below.

Service of process is modernised. Paragraph 8 permits electronic mail and other electronic means for the Court to inform counsel of urgent case events, provided at least forty-eight hours’ notice is given, while Paragraph 10 empowers a judge handling a pre-election matter to leverage technology generally, including virtual hearings. Paragraph 9 gives the Chief Judge power to assign judges across Judicial Divisions and to transfer pre-election matters between divisions, which allows caseloads to be balanced against the fixed 180-day clock rather than left to the accident of where a suit happens to be filed.

The provisions on hearings are where the Amendment is most assertive. Paragraph 11 requires the matter to be set down within seven days of the close of pleadings, caps adjournments at two per party save for a change of counsel, bars adjournment applications on a day fixed for hearing, and directs that priority be accorded to pre-election matters until judgment. Paragraph 11(3) restates Section 285(8) of the Constitution: rulings on preliminary objections and other interlocutory issues touching jurisdiction are suspended and delivered only at the stage of final judgment, subject to the proviso that the Court must first satisfy itself that originating processes were properly served. Paragraph 12 extends the same discipline to interlocutory applications generally, fixing five days for a respondent to react and three for a reply, and — notably — authorising costs against a party or counsel found to have brought an interlocutory application merely to delay a pre-election hearing.

Judicial Treatment of the Underlying Provisions: What the Case Law Shows

The Amendment does not write on a blank slate. Each of its major innovations answers a problem the courts have already litigated, repeatedly, under the parent provisions of Section 285. Reading the Practice Directions against that case law sharpens what the drafters were actually responding to.

On the 14-day filing window, the Supreme Court’s position has hardened rather than softened over time. In Garba v Adua(2011) 13 NWLR (Pt. 1263) 1, the Court treated Section 285(9) as plain and self-explanatory, dismissing a pre-election suit as statute-barred once the fourteen days had lapsed from the date of the primary. The Court of Appeal applied the same discipline in Fati Kakenna Alkali Monguno v All Progressives Congress & Ors (2019), holding that a claimant who cannot point to an accrual date within the window bears the consequence of dismissal, whatever the underlying merits. More recently, in Lokpobiri v APC & Ors, the Supreme Court went further and shut down an attempt to import the Interpretation Act’s date-exclusion rule to stretch the fourteen days, confirming that Section 285(9) is a self-contained clock immune to computation workarounds. Paragraph 6’s weekend and public-holiday registry access is, against that background, not administrative generosity — it is the only concession the judiciary can procedurally make to a deadline it has consistently refused to extend by interpretation.