The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has said that the purported local government election held in the state on Saturday August 22, 2026 is a “nullity” as it rests and a “brazen assault on democracy.”
In a press statement issued in Abakaliki on Saturday by the Publicity Secretary of the PDP in Ebonyi State, Prince Darlington Onwe, the party stated that the purported election part of serial contempt of valid court judgements that barred the Ebonyi State Independent Electoral Commission (BSIEC) from conducting such illegal exercise for not meeting basic constitutional requirements for conduct of election.
According to the statement, “The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), Ebonyi State Chapter, has convened this press conference to place on record, in clear legal and constitutional terms, our position that what EBSIEC and the Ebonyi State Government are presenting to the public as a local government election purportedly scheduled for today the 22nd August 2026 is not, in law or in fact, an election at all. It is a brazen assault on our democracy, a flagrant act of contempt, a continuing abuse of subsisting court process, and an exercise being conducted on a foundation the courts have already, and repeatedly, declared to be nothing. Hence, it’s worth a mention that what is built on nothing cannot stand; it is bound to fail. That is not a political opinion. It is a settled principle of Nigerian law, and it governs everything we say today in defence of the constitutional rights of the Ebonyi people.”
Speaking further on the faulty grounds on which the Ebonyi State Government is purportedly conducting the exercise, the PDP noted that the Ebonyi State Local Government Law No. 005 on which the government is relying upon for the illegal election is an outright nullity as it is manifestly inconsistent with all known electoral statutes in Nigeria.
“The Amended Ebonyi State Local Government Law No. 005 — the very instrument under which this election is being conducted fixes the tenure of local government chairmen and councillors in Ebonyi State at two years, a position publicly reiterated by the state government itself as recently as its 2022 inauguration of council officials. This is not a minor administrative variance; it is a direct violation of federal constitutional supremacy. It falls short of the three-year tenure that had, for years, been the constitutional norm applied across the federation under the Electoral Act, and it falls further still below the four-year uniform tenure the Supreme Court has now definitively pronounced upon in the July 2024 judgment,” the party stated.
The PDP noted that the Ebonyi State Government has formed a habbit of disobeying lawful and court judgements in relation to local government administration in the state and warned that the attitude of the government was putting the wellbeing of the local governments at grave risks as there would be consequences for the actions.
The party stated: “It is a matter of public judicial record that this is not the first time Ebonyi State’s local government elections have collapsed under legal scrutiny. On 25 August 2022, the Federal High Court, Abakaliki, presided over by the late Justice Fatun Riman, in Suit No. FHC/AI/CS/151, nullified the local government election conducted on 30 July 2022, holding it unconstitutional, null, void and of no effect for non-compliance with the Electoral Act 2022 and the denial of a level playing field to contestants. Rather than obey that judgment, the Ebonyi State Government proceeded, in open defiance, to swear in thirteen persons as local government chairmen on the strength of the very election the Federal High Court had declared to be nothing. The State Government thereafter appealed the Riman judgment to the Court of Appeal, Enugu Division, and lost: in May 2025, the Court of Appeal affirmed the Federal High Court’s nullification in full.
“That election, too, was challenged in court, and on 21 October 2025, the Federal High Court, Abakaliki, presided over by Justice H.I.O. Oshomah, nullified it in its entirety, sacking all thirteen chairmen and all one hundred and seventy-one councillors for non-compliance with the Electoral Act 2022 and the 1999 Constitution, and expressly restraining EBSIEC and the Ebonyi State Government from conducting any further local government election except strictly in accordance with the Constitution and the Electoral Act. To the best of our party’s information, that order has not been set aside, stayed, or overturned on appeal, and it therefore subsists today, binding on EBSIEC and the State Government alike by virtue of Section 287(3) of the 1999 Constitution, which makes the decisions of the Federal High Court enforceable throughout Nigeria by all authorities and persons. What EBSIEC now purportedly proposes for today being the 22 August 2026 is, on this record, nothing less than a third attempt to defeat an order of a court of competent jurisdiction that has never been vacated and a third attempt conducted in the teeth of an express judicial restraint naming EBSIEC itself. There is no gentler word for that than contempt and a deliberate sabotage of the rule of law.”
The PDP therefore called on relevant Federal Government agencies including the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC) and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) to immediately stop further allocations to local governments in Ebonyi State in order to forestall pilfering of public resources by unauthorised individuals.
“ we categorically submit that the local government structure in Ebonyi State currently rests on no lawful foundation whatsoever, and that the mono-party election EBSIEC now proposes to hold today on 22 August 2026, without first purging these defects and without genuine, verifiable multi-party participation, would be void ab initio.
“we formally place the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission (RMAFC), the Federation Account Allocation Committee (FAAC), and the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) on notice that any council structure emerging from tomorrow’s exercise is not, and cannot become, a lawful recipient of Federation Account allocation, and any disbursement made to such a structure would itself be an act taken in disregard of binding Supreme Court authority,” the statement concluded .