Isa Salami, a former President of the Court of Appeal, has faulted the emergence of Peter Obi as the presidential candidate of the Labour Party (LP) during the 2023 general elections, news.ng reports.
Salami, while receiving the 2025 Human Rights Defender Award in Ilorin, the Kwara State capital, blamed the judiciary for not identifying the errors made by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in allowing Obi to vie for the presidency, as well as his move to the Labour Party to emerge as its flag bearer in 2023, in which the former President of the Court of Appeal alleged that the latter was not a bona fide member of either political party.
To this end, Salami viewed it as incompetence on the part of the judiciary and a lack of adherence to the constitution.
He stated, “Sometimes when you see this judgment of some of them, they think this painful judgment should be outstanding and wonder what is happening.”
Questioning Obi’s eligibility, he inquired, “For instance, Obi or not, they are allowed to contest elections, presidential elections, in the sense that by the time we lost PDP, the Labour Party had submitted its list of members to INEC. How then does it and the Constitution say there can’t be independent candidates? How did he become a candidate if he doesn’t belong to Labour Party?”
Citing a classic example, the retired jurist noted the case of a certain sitting governor whom he claimed had a controversial party membership.
He noted, “The same thing happened to the governor of Hanoi State, who has now defected to APC. His name is not in the NNCB register, but they issued him with membership card, and the register is supposed to be the mother of the credit of the card. What is the source of his membership?” He added that the Supreme Court had previously frowned upon similar conduct in lower courts.
According to him, the Supreme Court had turned down similar cases in lower courts, faulting the issues as a sign of incompetence in the judiciary.
He stated, “And that’s the problem of competence. People get to the Supreme Court not because they are good, but because there is vacancy from their duty.”
