Okorocha Says He Won The Primary. The Affidavit Has Numbers.
Abuja · Friday 21 August 2026
Rochas Okorocha has gone to the Federal High Court over the Imo West senatorial ticket, suing INEC, the All Progressives Congress and Governor Hope Uzodimma. The suit is marked FHC/ABJ/CS/1854/2026, was filed on 13 August, and puts five questions and ten reliefs before the court.
Underneath the procedure is a straightforward factual dispute with two irreconcilable sets of numbers, and a constitutional question that is arguably more interesting than either.
The two counts
The APC primary for the Imo West senatorial district was held on 18 May. The party's primary committee, led by Williams Kayode, declared Uzodimma the winner with 230,464 votes, and INEC subsequently published his name as the party's candidate.
An affidavit filed in support of Okorocha's case, deposed by his son Amen Rochas, states a different result: Okorocha 150,780, Uzodimma 102,158.
| Source | Okorocha | Uzodimma | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| APC primary committee, as published | not stated | 230,464 | at least 230,464 |
| Affidavit filed with the suit | 150,780 | 102,158 | 252,938 |
The two accounts of the same primary. Note that the affidavit's total exceeds the single published figure, which is itself a question for the court.
These are not close readings of an ambiguous result. They are two descriptions of one afternoon that cannot both be accurate, and the gap between them is more than 128,000 votes on Uzodimma's line alone. A court will have to decide which document reflects what happened, which in Nigerian party primaries usually turns on delegate lists, accreditation records and who controlled the venue.
The constitutional argument is the sharper one
Okorocha's second line of attack does not depend on the count at all. He argues that Uzodimma, as a sitting governor, is ineligible under Section 183 of the 1999 Constitution as amended to contest for the Senate while in office.
That provision restricts a governor from holding another executive or legislative office during his tenure. The question the court will have to work through is whether seeking nomination for a future office, to be taken up after a governor's term ends, falls inside the restriction or outside it. There is a serious argument each way, and the answer has consequences well beyond Imo West.
What this is really about
Imo West is Okorocha's own senatorial district and he has held the seat. The dispute is the latest round of a long and personal contest between two men who have controlled Imo State politics between them for more than a decade, and it would be naive to read the suit as purely a matter of electoral arithmetic.
It is also a familiar Nigerian pattern arriving early in the cycle. The formal campaign opened on 19 August. Primaries that were disputed in May are now becoming court cases in August, which means the judiciary will be deciding who is allowed to appear on ballots at the same time as those candidates are campaigning. Nigerian pre-election litigation regularly runs into the weeks immediately before a vote, and occasionally past it.
A ballot printed before a nomination dispute is settled is a ballot that may have to be reprinted, and reprints are how election timetables slip.
What to watch
- Whether the court takes the constitutional question first. If Section 183 disposes of the matter, the vote count never has to be examined, and the wider precedent lands sooner.
- Whether the APC files its own account of the primary. The party is a defendant and has so far been represented only by its committee's declared figure.
- Whether INEC defends its publication or stands neutral. The commission publishes what parties submit, and its posture here signals how it intends to handle a season of similar suits.
The broader point is that Nigeria is entering a general election in which a significant number of candidacies will be settled by judges rather than by delegates. That has been true for several cycles and it is corrosive in a way that is easy to stop noticing. Every nomination decided in court is a decision voters had no part in, and the 2027 campaign has 150 days to run.
Reporting: Vanguard, Premium Times, The Eagle Online, Kanyi Daily and The News Chronicle.
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