{"id":17273,"date":"2026-11-13T20:00:45","date_gmt":"2026-11-13T20:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/13\/ogun-inec-silent-as-court-orders-it-to-restore-adebutus-name-within-24hrs\/"},"modified":"2026-11-13T20:00:45","modified_gmt":"2026-11-13T20:00:45","slug":"ogun-inec-silent-as-court-orders-it-to-restore-adebutus-name-within-24hrs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/2026\/11\/13\/ogun-inec-silent-as-court-orders-it-to-restore-adebutus-name-within-24hrs\/","title":{"rendered":"Ogun: INEC silent as court orders it to restore Adebutu\u2019s name within 24hrs"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><img width=\"860\" height=\"605\" src=\"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Ogun-INEC-silent-as-court-orders-it-to-restore-Adebutus-name-within-24hrs.jpg\" class=\"attachment-large size-large wp-post-image\" alt=\"Ogun: INEC silent as court orders it to restore Adebutu\u2019s name within 24hrs\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"high\" srcset=\"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Ogun-INEC-silent-as-court-orders-it-to-restore-Adebutus-name-within-24hrs.jpg 860w, https:\/\/cdn.vanguardngr.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/INEC-AMUPITAN-300x211.jpg 300w, https:\/\/cdn.vanguardngr.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/INEC-AMUPITAN-768x540.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 860px) 100vw, 860px\"><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>By Omeiza Ajayi<\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">ABUJA: The Independent National Electoral Commission INEC has yet to react officially to a Federal High Court judgment directing it to publish Oladipupo Adebutu\u2019s name as the Peoples Democratic Party PDP candidate for the 2027 Ogun governorship election, saying it only read about the ruling on social media.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The Director of Voter Education and Publicity at INEC, Mrs Victoria Messi-Eta, said she read about the judgment in the media and would get a response from the commission\u2019s legal department.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">As of the time of filing this report, she had yet to revert.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The National Commissioner in charge of Voter Education and Publicity, Malam Mohammed Haruna, neither returned calls nor responded to messages sent to him on the matter.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The commission\u2019s silence came after Justice Peter Lifu of the Federal High Court in Abuja ordered INEC on Friday to publish Adebutu\u2019s name within 24 hours.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Delivering judgment, Justice Lifu held that INEC had no powers to unilaterally remove the name of a validly nominated candidate by a political party.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He held that the commission\u2019s action was unconstitutional, unlawful and of no effect.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The judge said only the Federal High Court or the state high court had the power to declare a candidate invalid, not the commission.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">He also held that INEC breached Adebutu\u2019s right to fair hearing, and dismissed the commission\u2019s preliminary objection, declaring the suit competent.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The PDP and Adebutu filed the suit on Oct. 22 after his name was removed from the list of contestants for the Ogun governorship seat. INEC was the sole defendant.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Their lawyer, Ahmed Raji, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), sought 11 reliefs, including an order setting aside the commission\u2019s decision to omit, remove or refuse to publish Adebutu\u2019s name in the final list of candidates published on Oct. 10, for denial of fair hearing and violation of Sections 29 and 32 of the Electoral Act, 2026.<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">They also asked the court to compel \u201cthe defendant to, within twenty-four (24) hours of the order\/orders of this honourable court, include and\/or publish the name of the 2nd plaintiff as the 1st plaintiff\u2019s governorship candidate for Ogun State in the forthcoming 2027 General Election.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The post <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanguardngr.com\/2026\/11\/ogun-inec-silent-as-court-orders-it-to-restore-adebutus-name-within-24hrs\/\">Ogun: INEC silent as court orders it to restore Adebutu\u2019s name within 24hrs<\/a> appeared first on <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanguardngr.com\/\">Vanguard News<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>Source: <\/p>\n<div class=\"nSourse\">Vanguard News<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Omeiza Ajayi ABUJA: The Independent National Electoral Commission INEC has yet to react officially to a Federal High Court judgment directing it to publish Oladipupo Adebutu\u2019s name as the&hellip; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":17274,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-17273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17273","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/globalnigerianews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}