The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja on Tuesday delivered judgment in an appeal filed by the Liberation People’s Party (LPP) against the judgment of Justice BFM Nyako of the Federal High Court, Abuja, which declined to grant the reliefs sought by the LPP because the association submitted its application manually.
LPP was among the 14 associations prequalified from a pool of 171 political associations in 2025. The association paid the administrative fee of N2m charged by INEC and was issued an access code with a 30-day validity. However, INEC blocked access to its online portal for the upload of documents in support of the application for registration before the expiration of 30 days.
After representation to the Commission by LPP’s request to reopen the portal to enable it to upload the necessary documents, it approached the Federal High Court in Abuja in January this year. Therefore, today’s judgment came as a huge relief to the association after a long, torturous journey to register as a political party.
The Court held that LPP was deemed registered as a political party with effect from December 2025, that is, 60 days from the date the association submitted its application in consonance with section 75 (4) of the Electoral Act, 2022. The Court also ordered INEC to issue the party a certificate of registration within 30 days from today, even as it slammed damages of N5m as well as cost of N500,000.00 against INEC. The unanimous judgment was delivered by Justices Banjoko, Abang, and Oyewunmi.
