By Suleiman Anyalewechi
Retired President of the Court of Appeal, Honourable Justice Ayo Salami, has submitted that former Presidential Candidate of the Labour Party, Peter Obi, and Governor of Kano State, Abba Kabiru Yusuf were not qualified to participate in the 2023 Presidential Elections. Salami said both men ought not to have been allowed to contest in the 2023 General Elections. He, however, did not blame both men for the error in contesting, but the Judiciary.
Salami said the Judiciary, especially, the Supreme Court failed woefully in its duties when it allowed Obi and Yusuf to run in 2023.
According to him, it is thanks to the incompetence among some Judges that Obi is today referred to as a former Presidential Candidate and Yusuf, Governor of Kano State.
Justice Salami spoke on Tuesday March 24, 2026 at the occasion of the presentation of an award to him by officials of the Professor Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative Journalism ,in Ilorin, Kwara State.
He emphasized that neither Obi nor Yusuf was constitutionally qualified to fly their parties’ flags at the 2023 polls because none of them met the requirements for party membership.
He pointed out that by the time Obi left the Peoples Democratic party, PDP, to pick the presidential ticket of the LP, his name was not in the register of the LP.
His words: “Peter Obi ought not to have been allowed to contest the 2023 presidential election.
“In this sense, by the time he lost the PDP primaries, LP had submitted its list of members to the Independent National Electoral Commission INEC.
“And the Constitution says that there cannot be an independent candidate. So how did he become a candidate of the LP if his name was never in its register at the time?
“The same thing happened to the Governor of Kano state Abba Kabiru Yusuf who has now defected to the All Progressive Congress APC.
“His name was not in the New Nigeria Peoples Party NNPP’s register as at the time. But they issued him a membership card, and the register is supposed to be the mother of the card”, the retired Appeal Court President queried.
According to him, the general problem of incompetence within the Judiciary, however, ensured that the Supreme Court allowed the Kano state Governor to continue in office, even when the lower courts had questioned it.
Salami: “But the Supreme Court countenanced it even though the Tribunal and Appeal Court frowned at it. That is the problem of competence.”
For the records, however, Obi did not lose in the PDP Presidential Primary as claimed by Justice Salami. He resigned from the PDP before the Primary Elections.
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