Election petition tribunals play a strategic role in Nigeria’s democratic process as they adjudicate disputes which may determine the political fate of elected officials and in some instances, reconfigure the entire trajectory of governance in a state or at the federal level. Members are appointed by the President of the Court of Appeal, predominantly from serving judges of the High Courts, Sharia Courts of Appeal and Customary Courts of Appeal under Section 285(2) of the 1999 Constitution as amended.
The judiciary says it is based on integrity, competence and consultation with state Chief Judges and other judicial stakeholders. But away from the public contest of politicians jostling for votes, a quieter contest is said to be played out within the judiciary itself, one allegedly involving lobbying, networking and in some accounts outright inducements, all aimed at securing a tribunal seat before the campaign season reaches its height.
The attraction of a seat like this is not hard to see. Assignments to a tribunal bring with them significant public visibility and access to sitting allowances and logistics support that can amount to a sizeable sum over the months that a tribunal is in being. That is a significant attraction in a judiciary still wrestling with chronic funding shortfalls, irregular emoluments and infrastructure deficits that have for long gnawed at judicial welfare and public trust. Whether true or not in the experience of every officer, that perception is enough to make lobbying a rational strategy for those seeking appointment.
As Nigeria inches towards the 2027 general elections, a cycle that will generate its own wave of tribunal litigation, the question is worth serious consideration: is lobbying for tribunal seats a documented reality or mainly speculation dressed up as common knowledge?
This is clear from the Guidelines and Procedural Rules of the National Judicial Council. Any candidate who canvassed or lobbied directly or by intermediaries including politicians, traditional rulers or other judicial officers, for judicial appointment, shall be disqualified from consideration. The same prohibition applies to judges already on the bench and aspiring to move up within the system.
The former Chief Justice of Nigeria, Aloma Mukhtar, has described the lobbying for judicial appointment as a culture that undermines the status of the judiciary. This concern is evident in the rules on the constitution of tribunals where the Chief Justice of Nigeria through the NJC and the President of the Court of Appeal have wide discretion as to who sits on these panels.
Critics say such a concentration of decision-making in a few hands creates a clear structural vulnerability: When one office controls access to assignments of high value, the incentive to cultivate closeness to that office is natural and almost inevitable.
A UNODC working paper on judicial selection in Nigeria arrived at a similar conclusion, noting that many respondents to its research expressed concerns over the outsized role of the Chief Justice of Nigeria in the process, leaving the system open to informal pressures that formal rules cannot easily measure or mitigate by limiting institutional checks and balances.
The assertion that lobbying does happen is not just anecdotal. The evidence for it, from a number of documented sources, either directly or by clear implication, has steadily grown across multiple election cycles.
Professor Attahiru Jega, who led Nigeria’s election commission during the 2011 and 2015 elections, has said publicly that some judges have become notorious for what he called “cash and carry” judgements, especially in election-related matters. That charge carries real heft from someone who has been on the inside for two election cycles and seen firsthand how the results of tribunals can diverge from both evidence and legal reasoning in ways that raise uncomfortable questions.
One of the clearest public confirmations came in 2019 from former EFCC Acting Chairman Ibrahim Magu, who said judges and lawyers were canvassing for tribunal assignments because of the financial benefits attached to them, warning against tribunals becoming conduits for siphoning public funds. That the warning came from the country’s leading anti-corruption official at the time gave it institutional weight, confirming that the allegations were being taken seriously inside government, even if it didn’t lead to prosecutions that produced convictions.
And the historical record provides yet more concrete evidence. In 2016, the Department of State Services raided judges’ homes across the country and recovered huge sums of cash in situations that shocked the legal community and briefly brought the question of electoral litigation and judicial corruption to national attention.
