Hope Uzodimma, who became Governor of Imo State in January 2020 after the Supreme Court overturned the election of Emeka Ihedioha and declared him the winner, has been drawn into another legal battle, one that could either consolidate or unsettle his political standing in the months ahead, writes Emameh Gabriel.
Yesterday, a Federal High Court sitting in Abuja declared former governor Rochas Okorocha the winner of the All Progressives Congress primary for Imo West Senatorial District, nullifying Uzodimma’s candidacy and ordering the party to forward Okorocha’s name to the Independent National Electoral Commission as its candidate for the January 16, 2027 election.
The presiding judge, Justice Obiora Egwuatu, held that the evidence before the court established that Okorocha, not Uzodimma, secured the majority of lawful votes at the May 18 primary monitored by INEC, and barred the governor from presenting himself as the party’s flagbearer.
The ruling was premised on a direct conflict of records. According to figures published by the commission, Uzodimma had won with 230,464 votes to Okorocha’s 1,098, a margin that seemed to settle the matter. Okorocha, however, insisted he actually polled 150,780 votes against Uzodimma’s 102,158, and asked the court to be guided by the monitoring reports of INEC officials who were present at the primary rather than the figures announced by the party’s returning officer.
The court agreed, finding that the evidence proved Okorocha won and directing the APC to submit his name accordingly. Uzodimma and the APC had challenged the suit on procedural grounds, including the argument that it was filed outside the statutory time limit for pre-election matters, while INEC maintained that its monitoring report identified Uzodimma as the winner. The court resolved those disputes against the governor.
The immediate aftermath has been a standoff between two camps that have never been comfortable allies. The APC’s state publicity secretary, Onwuasoanya FCC Jones, in light of the judgment, issued a statement insisting that Uzodimma “remains the candidate” and that the party’s legal department would study the judgment and act accordingly, while urging members to remain focused and undistracted. A statement of that kind does not suspend a judgment. Until the ruling is set aside on appeal, the legal position remains as the court declared it, and failure to forward Okorocha’s name to the commission would place the state chapter in contempt.
Okorocha’s side, for its part, has secured the judicial declaration it sought, though the practical effect will depend on whether the party complies with the order and whether any appeal or stay of execution follows. The two men share a long and complicated history in Imo politics, and the dispute over this ticket is only the latest chapter in a rivalry that has shaped the state’s APC structure for years.
Okorocha, who governed Imo State until 2019, had all but faded from the political scene since he left office until recently, when he resurfaced to declare his interest in the Senate race. There are speculations in some quarters that Nyesom Wike, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, drew him into the contest, though no evidence has been produced to support the claim.
If that is the case, the legal battle is not the only front on which the governor is fighting. There is no doubt his relationship with Wike has deteriorated into an open feud. Wike has publicly declared that he will never support Uzodimma for Senate President, describing the matter as one of principle rather than personal quarrel, and has questioned the governor’s political legitimacy by recalling that he became governor from a fourth-place position before the courts intervened.
The two men are also on opposite sides of the Rainbow Coalition, the cross-party arrangement Wike is promoting ahead of 2027, which Uzodimma, as Chairman of the Progressive Governors’ Forum, has sought to discourage APC governors from embracing. Wike has accused him of using that position to advance a personal ambition. The tension has been visible in public, including an occasion when Wike declined to shake hands with the governor at an event in Abuja.
Governor Hope Uzodimma is one of the good number of Nigerian politicians whose mandate was confirmed by the courts after the ballot. He had served as a senator before 2020, but it was the Supreme Court judgment that declared him the winner of the governorship election, restoring votes he claimed he had been denied, which has become a reference point in the country’s political and legal discourse. Some have described him as a product of the finger of God. Now he faces another case, one that threatens everything he has built over two decades.
But there is a different between the current case and that of 2020. In January 2020, the Supreme Court overturned the election of Emeka Ihedioha and declared Uzodimma governor. The court found that results from 388 polling units had been improperly excluded during collation. When those votes were added, Uzodimma had won. The judgment was unanimous, and when Ihedioha applied for a review, the Supreme Court dismissed the application, holding that its decision was final, though Justice Nweze dissented.
In both, a court displaced an outcome that had been announced in favour of another candidate. In 2020, that displacement favoured Uzodimma. In 2026, it went against him, and he is preparing to challenge it on appeal, as the party’s statement that its legal department is studying the judgment makes clear. Beyond that, the similarity ends, and the difference is decisive.
The 2026 judgment rests on a finding of fact. The Federal High Court heard evidence about a party primary, weighed that evidence and concluded that Okorocha won. It preferred an account of the primary that departs from the figures the party and the commission announced. Whatever one thinks of that conclusion, it is a finding of fact about a contested primary, not the correction of an excluded tally. Findings of fact are the least vulnerable part of a judgment on appeal. An appellate court will not reweigh evidence because it prefers a different conclusion. It will intervene only where a finding is perverse, unsupported or reached through a flawed process. That is the hurdle the coming appeal must clear, and it is a higher one than the 2020 case ever presented.
None of this means the governor is without options. His team argued at trial that Okorocha’s suit was filed outside the statutory time limit for pre-election matters. Pre-election litigation is governed by strict timelines, and if the Court of Appeal accepts that argument, the case ends without the merits ever being reached. That is a real prospect, and I think it is the argument his lawyers should be pressing. A stay of execution pending appeal is also available, though it preserves a position rather than vindicating one. The road back runs through the Court of Appeal on procedural and evidentiary grounds, not through an appeal to past glory. The election is fixed for January 16, 2027, and the appeal must run before that date or the litigation risks becoming academic.
I take no position on who should represent the All Progressives Congress in Imo West. That is for the courts and, ultimately, for the voters. But I take a position on the argument being made in the governor’s name. A judgment remains binding until it is set aside.
Whether Uzodimma repeats 2020 is something the appellate courts will settle.
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