Court Strikes Out Ararume’s Imo North Suit Over Ndubueze’s APC Candidacy

The Court Stops the Case at the Door

The Federal High Court in Abuja has struck out a suit filed by former Senator Ifeanyi Ararume challenging the recognition of Senator Patrick Ndubueze as the All Progressives Congress candidate for the Imo North Senatorial District in the 2027 general election.

Justice Salim Ibrahim held that the Abuja division could not entertain the matter because the same subject had already been determined by another division of the Federal High Court in Owerri.

The decision, delivered on August 26, became publicly available after a certified true copy was sighted on September 4.

Ararume’s suit, marked FHC/ABJ/CS/1569/2026, had asked the court to recognise him as the APC candidate and set aside the subsequent uploading of Ndubueze’s name on the Independent National Electoral Commission’s portal.

But the court never reached the substantive question of who was lawfully entitled to the ticket.

A Battle Over More Than a Party Ticket

At the centre of the ruling was Ndubueze’s preliminary objection.

His legal team argued that the dispute had already been determined by the Federal High Court sitting in Owerri in Suit No. FHC/OW/CS/70/2026, decided by Justice I.N. Owoibo on June 25, 2026.

Justice Ibrahim agreed that both proceedings concerned the same subject matter.

The judge emphasised that the Federal High Court is one court, even though it operates through different judicial divisions. The divisions, he explained, exist largely for administrative convenience.

That distinction proved decisive.

In the court’s reasoning, even if a party believes an earlier judgment was wrongly decided, a court of coordinate jurisdiction cannot simply disregard it. The proper route for challenging such a decision is through the appellate process.

The court therefore sustained Ndubueze’s preliminary objection and described the fresh Abuja action as a gross abuse of judicial process.

The Bigger Lesson for Election Litigation

The ruling is significant because it demonstrates how election disputes can be determined by procedural architecture before the court ever examines the underlying political controversy.

Ararume had challenged what he described as an unlawful substitution and sought orders that would have led INEC to recognise him rather than Ndubueze as the APC candidate. INEC, for its part, told the court that it would abide by the eventual determination and explained that political parties upload their candidates’ particulars through the access provided to them.

Yet the immediate question before the Abuja court was not ultimately whether Ararume or Ndubueze was the rightful candidate.

It was whether a second division of the same Federal High Court could entertain a dispute that another division had already determined.

That question has now been answered against the fresh action.

The ruling does not, by itself, amount to a judicial declaration on every underlying allegation surrounding the APC primary or the competing claims to the ticket. Rather, it reinforces a fundamental principle of judicial administration: litigants cannot use parallel proceedings before courts of coordinate jurisdiction to obtain a fresh determination of an issue already decided.

For the 2027 election cycle, the development also underlines the importance of procedural strategy in pre-election litigation. A party may believe strongly in the merits of its case, but jurisdiction, existing judgments and the proper appellate route can determine whether those merits are ever examined.