NGScorecard

The APC failed to conduct valid primaries to select candidates for the 2019 governorship, National Assembly, and state assembly elections in Zamfara State, yet still fielded candidates who went on to record wins at the polls. PDP challenged the validity of every APC candidacy in the state.

The Supreme Court nullified all APC victories across every contested seat in Zamfara State, ruling the party had no valid candidates on the ballot, and declared the PDP candidates — including for governor — the lawful winners. The ruling was immediately enforced, handing PDP full control of a state APC had believed it won outright.

Hope Uzodinma of the APC, who had finished fourth in INEC's declared results for the 2019 Imo State governorship election, petitioned the Supreme Court alleging that votes from over 300 polling units had been excluded from the final collation, which he argued would have made him the winner instead of PDP's Emeka Ihedioha.

The Supreme Court accepted Uzodinma's recalculated figures and declared him governor with immediate effect, removing sitting governor Ihedioha from office the same day. The judgment drew unusually sharp criticism, including from some sitting justices in dissent and legal scholars, over the mathematical basis for the recount and the precedent of a court-installed governor who had polled a distant fourth.

Days before the scheduled inauguration, the Supreme Court found that APC deputy governorship candidate Biobarakuma Degi-Eremienyo had submitted false information — including a forged NYSC exemption certificate — in his INEC nomination forms for the November 2019 Bayelsa governorship election, which the APC ticket had won.

The Court disqualified the entire APC ticket, including governor-elect David Lyon, just a day before he was due to be sworn in, and declared PDP's Douye Diri the winner instead. The ruling was enforced immediately, and Diri was sworn in as scheduled while Lyon was barred from taking office.

Activist and journalist Omoyele Sowore was arrested in August 2019 over his call for a #RevolutionNow protest movement and charged with treason and money laundering. The Federal High Court granted him bail on multiple occasions with stipulated conditions.

The DSS repeatedly failed to release Sowore even after courts ordered his release on bail, and re-arrested him inside the courtroom in December 2019 immediately after a judge granted him fresh bail — an episode that drew condemnation from the National Assembly, civil society, and international rights groups as a direct defiance of judicial authority. He was eventually released, but the underlying case dragged on for years without resolution.

IPOB leader Nnamdi Kanu, who had jumped bail in 2017, was forcibly returned to Nigeria from Kenya in June 2021 in a manner his lawyers argued amounted to an unlawful extraordinary rendition rather than a lawful extradition, violating his fundamental rights and Nigeria's own extradition laws.

The Court of Appeal agreed that Kanu's rendition was unlawful, an abuse of court process, and ordered his unconditional release, discharging the terrorism-related charges against him. The federal government refused to comply and instead appealed to the Supreme Court, keeping Kanu in detention through the remainder of Buhari's term and beyond.

On 20 October 2020, security operatives opened fire on unarmed #EndSARS protesters at the Lekki Toll Gate in Lagos. The federal government and military initially denied that any live rounds were fired or that any deaths occurred at the scene, disputing widely circulated eyewitness and video evidence.

The Lagos State panel's report found that at least 'some persons' died from the shooting, characterising the incident as a massacre and contradicting the federal government's denials. No federal prosecution of military or police personnel followed the report, and the government continued to dispute aspects of the panel's findings rather than acting on its recommendations.

Following the government's June 2021 suspension of Twitter's operations in Nigeria, SERAP and a coalition of journalists and media organisations sued at the ECOWAS Community Court of Justice, arguing the ban violated the rights to freedom of expression and access to information guaranteed under regional and international law.

The court ruled the suspension unlawful and a violation of Nigerians' fundamental rights, ordering the government not to repeat similar bans in future. By the time of the ruling the ban had already been lifted (January 2022) after separate negotiations with Twitter, so the practical remedy was limited to the court's finding and its deterrent effect on any repeat action.

P&ID, a British Virgin Islands company, had won a 2017 arbitration award — which by 2019 had grown with interest to roughly $9.6 billion — over Nigeria's failure to honour a 2010 gas-processing agreement that Nigeria's legal team argued had been procured through bribery and fraud from the outset.

The Malami-led Ministry of Justice secured a landmark 2020 UK court ruling allowing Nigeria to challenge the award on fraud grounds and obtained a stay of enforcement, averting immediate seizure of Nigerian assets abroad. The full evidentiary hearing was still ongoing when Buhari left office in May 2023; the English High Court fully set aside the award for fraud months later, in October 2023, vindicating the defence strategy built during his term.