Abuja-based lawyer, Pelumi Olajengbesi, has urged political parties to stop distracting the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) with frivolous intra-party squabbles.

In a statement on Monday, Olajengbesi, a Senior Partner at Abuja-based law firm, Law Corridor, said political parties should allow the electoral umpire to focus on its core mandate, which is to conduct credible elections.

He lamented a trend where INEC is dragged into internal crises within political parties, especially those bordering on primary election disputes, which party leaders should resolve.

Olajengbesi said, “Though INEC is constitutionally mandated to be a party to pre-election and post-election litigations, political parties should apply caution and discretion in the type of cases that they join the electoral umpire in. INEC should be allowed to focus on its core mandate: to conduct credible polls.”

The lawyer quoted a 2025 report by the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre, which noted a high failure rate of election petitions after the 2023 elections.

“The report said at the 2023 Election Petition Tribunal, 88.9 per cent of the 895 Tribunal cases analysed failed, while only 11.1 per cent were successful. Similarly, at the Court of Appeal, 79.4 per cent of 588 election appeals failed, with only 20.9 per cent succeeding.

“Also, the report said 73.1 per cent of cases were dismissed due to the finding that the burden of proof was not discharged; 14.7 per cent of petitions were dismissed for procedural reasons; 8.5 per cent were dismissed due to lack of jurisdiction over cases considered to be pre-election matters; and 3.7 per cent was dismissed due to lack of legal standing of the petitioner to file a petition.

“Aside from the waste of precious judicial time, these cases that were short of merit slow down our democracy when the electoral umpire ought to focus on solid election planning but is pulled here and there to courts by political parties,” he said.

Olajengbesi urged the 21 political parties in Nigeria to put their houses in order and stop distracting INEC, especially with primary election disputes and court cases. He cited Section 83 (5) of the newly promulgated Electoral Act 2026, which stipulates that “Subject to the provision of subsection (3), no Court in Nigeria shall entertain jurisdiction over any suit or matter pertaining to the internal affairs of a political party.”

Recently, in Akwa Ibom, INEC Chairman, Joash Amupitan, raised concern over a surge of unnecessary intra-party disputes and litigations involving political parties, warning that the trend is diverting the commission’s attention from its core mandate of election planning.

Before Amupitan, the commission had also said it battled over 600 pre-2023 election cases and budgeted over N3bn for post-2023 election cases.

Back in 2018, INEC had also lamented the spate of conflicting court judgments arising from leadership crises in political parties, which it considered a distraction to its core mandate.