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NUPENG’S PURPORTED STRIKE AND ITS SUBSEQUENT SUSPENSION: A COMMENTARY ON LABOUR RIGHTS, COLLECTIVE ACTION AND LEGAL ISSUES ARISING FROM THE DANGOTE-NUPENG DISPUTE

We are pleased to have successfully represented Hon. Haruna Shekwolo Audi (hereinafter referred to as “Our Client”) in the recently concluded pre-election dispute before the Federal High Court, Abuja.

This suit, instituted on the 24th of July 2025, sought to challenge the candidacy of Our Client as the nominee of the All-Progressives Congress for the Bwari Area Council Chairmanship Election. The Plaintiff, Hon. Joshua Ishaku, contended that he was the rightful winner of the party primary of 25th June 2025 and asked the Court to declare him the valid candidate while seeking far reaching injunctive orders against our client.

From the moment we were briefed, we approached the matter with clarity and a deliberate commitment to ensuring that the Court was properly guided on both the facts and the law. What became immediately apparent to us was that the Plaintiff’s case suffered from two fatal defects that went to the heart of the Court’s jurisdiction.

The first was the issue of time. Pre-election matters are governed by strict constitutional timelines and the law requires that any complaint must be lodged within (14) fourteen days of the event or decision being challenged. The documents before the Court, particularly the internal records of the All-Progressives Congress, showed clearly that the National Working Committee took the final decision recognizing Our Client as the valid candidate on the 30th of June 2025. That was the date the Certificate of Return was issued and the date the party directed that his name be forwarded to the Independent National Electoral Commission. The Plaintiff therefore had until the 14th of July 2025 to file any action. Instead, he approached the Court on the 24th of July, ten days after the prescribed window had closed.

We invited the Court to consider the current authority of the Supreme Court in Abdullahi v. Loko (2023) 6 NWLR (pt.1881) 445 @ 474, which explains that the date of knowledge is irrelevant in pre-election litigation. It is the date of the event itself that matters. The Court agreed entirely with our position and held that the suit was filed out of time, that it was incurably defective and that the Court lacked jurisdiction to entertain it.

The second issue that we placed before the Court was the Plaintiff’s failure to comply with the very rules of the party under which he sought nomination. In his own oath of allegiance, signed within his nomination form, he undertook that he would not file any action in court without first exhausting the internal mechanisms for dispute resolution. Those mechanisms include the Primary Election Appeal Committee and further appeal to the National Working Committee. The evidence before the Court showed that he did not utilize these remedies. In line with the decisions of the Supreme Court in Aliyu v. APC &ORS. (2022) LPELR - 57345 SC and Nyameh v. INEC & ORS. (2023) LPELR - 59999 (SC), the Court held that the action was premature and incompetent. On this ground also, the Court held that jurisdiction was lacking and the suit could not be sustained.

Although the Court had already resolved the matter in our favour, it still addressed the merits out of an abundance of caution. The Court found that the evidence placed before it overwhelmingly supported the legitimacy of Our Client’s emergence as the party’s candidate. The party’s records, the monitoring report of the Independent National Electoral Commission and the report of the Primary Election Appeal Committee all pointed to one conclusion which is that Hon. Audi was the rightful nominee. The Plaintiff, on the other hand, failed to establish any of the declaratory reliefs he sought. In its final pronouncement, the Court struck out the suit as statute barred, dismissed it for want of jurisdiction on account of the Plaintiff’s failure to exhaust internal party remedies and confirmed that Our Client remained the validly nominated candidate of the All-Progressives Congress for the forthcoming Bwari Area Council Chairmanship Election. For us as counsel, this judgment reinforces an important message about the sanctity of constitutional timelines in pre-election matters and the need for aspirants to abide by the internal dispute resolution mechanisms of their political parties before seeking judicial intervention. More importantly, it affirms the legitimacy of our client’s candidacy and brings clarity and stability to the party’s nomination process in Bwari Area Council.

We are delighted with this outcome as it reflects the diligence with which our Dispute Team approached the matter, the strength of the legal foundations we laid before the Court and the Court’s commitment to upholding the rule of law. Above all, it is a well-deserved victory for Hon. Haruna Shekwolo Audi and we are honored to have represented him.

The dispute resolution team was led by our Managing Partner, M. J. Numa SAN, working closely with our Associate, Emmanuel C. Sogo, Esq. In bringing this matter to a successful conclusion, we effectively prosecuted the defence in conjunction with Mahmud & Co., a collaboration that strengthened our position and contributed to the favourable outcome.

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