SUPREME COURT JUDGMENT DID NOT DISQUALIFY IYABO OBASANJO, AIDE SAYS

A fresh political controversy has erupted in Ogun Central following Thursday’s Supreme Court judgment on provisions of the Electoral Act 2026.

A social-media intervention by an aide to the Ogun State Governor suggesting that Senator Prof. Iyabo Obasanjo’s candidacy is now in serious legal jeopardy.

The senator’s media aide, Dr Odun Agbalajobi, has rejected that interpretation, describing it as a misleading attempt to turn a judgment concerning electoral law into a judicial disqualification that the Supreme Court did not make.

ValidViewNetwork reports that the dispute is now less about whether the Supreme Court restored the disputed provisions of the Electoral Act and more about what that judgment actually means for a particular candidate who was not a party to the case.

That distinction is important.

The Supreme Court, in a unanimous decision delivered on September 24, 2026, allowed an appeal by the Independent National Electoral Commission and set aside the Court of Appeal’s earlier decision which had invalidated Sections 77(5), 77(6), 77(7) and 84(2) of the Electoral Act 2026.

The seven-member panel, led by Justice Adamu Jauro, held that the disputed provisions were not inconsistent with the 1999 Constitution.

The provisions deal principally with political-party membership registers and the statutory framework for candidate nomination.

The judgment also restored the Federal High Court’s earlier position in the dispute and awarded costs against the Zenith Labour Party, which had challenged the provisions.

What the judgment did not do, according to Obasanjo’s aide, was name Iyabo Obasanjo as a party to the case or issue an order declaring her ineligible to contest the Ogun Central senatorial election.

And that is where the political argument has begun.

A judgment on electoral law, not an order against Iyabo

In a statement issued on Friday, Agbalajobi said attempts to present the Supreme Court judgment as an automatic disqualification of Obasanjo amounted to an interpretation that went beyond the judgment itself.

He said the case before the apex court involved INEC and the Zenith Labour Party over the constitutionality and operation of specified provisions of the Electoral Act.

Senator Obasanjo, he stressed, was not a party to that litigation. Her name, according to the aide, was not the subject of the judgment and the Supreme Court did not issue an order specifically disqualifying her from contesting the 2027 Ogun Central senatorial election.

That distinction matters because a court can determine the validity or application of a general statutory provision without necessarily making an individual-specific order against every person who may potentially fall within its scope.

ValidViewNetwork gathered that this is the central weakness the Obasanjo camp sees in the argument being circulated against her: the leap from “the law has been restored” to “the Supreme Court has disqualified this particular candidate.”

Those are two different propositions.

The first is established by Thursday’s judgment.

The second requires a separate legal determination based on the candidate’s circumstances, the relevant statutory requirements and the evidence concerning her nomination.

What the Supreme Court actually restored

The controversy cannot, however, be reduced to a political exchange. The restored provisions are significant.

Section 77(5) provides that only persons whose names are contained in the membership register submitted to INEC within the prescribed period may participate in party primaries, congresses or conventions.

Section 77(6) restricts political parties from using a membership register other than the one submitted to the electoral commission.

Section 77(7) provides consequences where a political party fails to submit its membership register within the prescribed period.

Section 84(2) also provides for direct primaries or consensus as methods of candidate nomination.

These provisions were at the centre of the constitutional dispute that travelled from the Federal High Court to the Court of Appeal and ultimately to the Supreme Court.

The Court of Appeal had earlier declared the provisions unconstitutional.

The Supreme Court has now reversed that position. That is an important development for every political party preparing for the 2027 elections.

But the existence of a statutory requirement does not, by itself, answer every factual question concerning an individual candidate.

That requires evidence.

The dates being weaponised in the argument

Ojo’s intervention centres heavily on the chronology of Obasanjo’s movement from the APC to the PDP.

His post argues that Obasanjo resigned from the APC in May, returned to the PDP in June and was subsequently presented as the PDP candidate for Ogun Central.

Those events are not in dispute.

Obasanjo’s resignation letter was dated May 31, 2026, and her return to the PDP was publicly marked in Abeokuta on June 17, when the party formally unveiled her as its Ogun Central senatorial candidate.

But chronology alone does not establish the legal conclusion being advanced.

The question is not simply when did Iyabo leave one party and join another?

The relevant legal questions include: What register did the PDP submit to INEC? When was it submitted? What was the applicable deadline? What nomination process did the PDP use? What documents were filed?

And what, if any, challenge has been brought against the validity of her nomination before the appropriate electoral forum?

Those are questions of evidence and law.

They cannot be answered merely by looking at photographs from a reception ceremony or the date on which a resignation letter became public.

But neither can the opposite conclusion be reached merely by pointing to the Supreme Court judgment without establishing how the restored provisions apply to the particular facts of Obasanjo’s nomination.

“Show us the order”

That is precisely the challenge from Obasanjo’s camp. Agbalajobi called on those circulating claims of automatic disqualification to identify the portion of the Supreme Court judgment that allegedly disqualified the senator.

He asked them to produce the specific order or pronouncement upon which the claim rests.

The aide’s argument is essentially this:.If the Supreme Court disqualified Iyabo Obasanjo, where is the order?

If it invalidated the PDP’s nomination of her, where is that determination?

If it found that her particular circumstances breached the restored provisions, where did it make that finding?

Those questions are different from asking whether Sections 77 and 84 of the Electoral Act are valid.

The Supreme Court has answered the latter question. The Obasanjo camp says nobody should pretend that the court has also answered the former when it did not.

A political interpretation is not a court order

This distinction is especially important in an election season, when legal language can quickly become political ammunition.

A candidate can be described by a political opponent as “disqualified”. That description does not make it a judicial order.

A party can argue that another party failed to comply with an electoral provision.

That argument does not, on its own, establish that a court has made such a finding.

And a court can uphold a statutory provision without simultaneously determining the eligibility of every candidate whose circumstances may eventually be tested against that provision.

ValidViewNetwork’s reading of the competing positions is therefore straightforward: the Supreme Court has restored the law, while the question of how that law affects Iyabo Obasanjo’s specific nomination remains a matter that must be established through the relevant facts, documents and, where necessary, legal proceedings.

That is a much narrower and more defensible position than announcing an automatic disqualification.

The politics behind the legal argument

There is also a political dimension to the controversy.

Obasanjo is not an unknown entrant into Ogun politics. She is a former senator who previously represented Ogun Central and was an APC governorship aspirant before leaving the party in May 2026.

The APC subsequently rejected some of the complaints contained in her resignation and said she had been treated fairly during her time in the party.

She later returned to the PDP and was formally unveiled as the party’s Ogun Central senatorial candidate.

Her candidacy therefore carries political significance beyond the immediate Electoral Act dispute.

That makes the temptation to attach political meaning to every legal development understandable.

But it also makes precision more important.

The public should not be asked to confuse a party political argument with a judicial pronouncement.

What the PDP candidate’s camp is actually saying

Agbalajobi’s statement does not deny the Supreme Court’s restoration of the Electoral Act provisions. Instead, it rejects the attempt to use that judgment as though the court had already issued an individual disqualification order against Obasanjo.

That is the heart of the rebuttal. He described the interpretation being circulated as misleading and politically motivated, and urged members of the public, particularly voters in Ogun Central, to distinguish between what the Supreme Court actually decided and what political actors claim it decided.

The senator, according to her aide, will continue her engagement with constituents and her campaign for the Ogun Central seat.

The political message is therefore clear: the Supreme Court judgment is not being ignored; its interpretation is being challenged.

The records will ultimately matter

There is, however, one point on which both sides of this political argument should agree.

The Electoral Act has now imposed a statutory framework that political parties must comply with.

If questions arise concerning a candidate’s membership, nomination or party register, the relevant records will be critical.

The register. The date of submission. The nomination documents. The applicable timetable. The party’s compliance with the Electoral Act.

And, if challenged, the decision of the appropriate court or tribunal.

Those are the documents capable of settling the dispute. Not Facebook posts. Not campaign slogans. Not political declarations.

And not headlines announcing that a candidate has been disqualified when no such judicial order has been identified.

That is why the Obasanjo camp is demanding that those making the claim produce the specific judicial authority for it.

Until then, what exists as a matter of established record is a Supreme Court judgment restoring specified provisions of the Electoral Act.

What has not been established by the judgment itself is that the apex court has issued an order specifically disqualifying Senator Prof. Iyabo Obasanjo from the 2027 Ogun Central senatorial race.

And that distinction, in a contest already becoming crowded with political claims and counterclaims, is not a technicality.It is the difference between what a court decided and what politicians say the court decided.

ValidViewNetwork is publishing this clarification as a distinct fact-based political analysis of the competing claims, not as an endorsement of either camp.