Justice Isa Salami Claims Peter Obi’s 2023 Run Was Illegal; Says Former LP Candidate Failed 30-Day Membership Rule

The 2023 presidential election may be long over, but the legal debate surrounding it has been reignited by one of Nigeria’s most respected retired jurists. On Tuesday, March 24, 2026, Justice Isa Salami, a former President of the Court of Appeal, claimed that Peter Obi was never technically eligible to stand as a candidate for the Labour Party.

Speaking on the legal foundations of Nigerian elections, Justice Salami pointed to a specific section of the Electoral Act. He argued that because Obi resigned from the PDP and joined the Labour Party just days before the primaries, he could not have been on the party’s register for the mandatory 30 days. “You cannot jump from one boat to another while the sea is already rough and expect the law to ignore the timing,” Salami remarked, suggesting that the “Solution” for future elections must be stricter enforcement of party membership timelines.

While this argument was famously dismissed by the Presidential Election Petition Tribunal in 2023 which held that Obi’s membership was an “internal affair” of the Labour Party Justice Salami’s fresh comments have sparked a heated debate online. Critics of the 2023 process see his words as a late “validation” of their concerns, while Obi’s legal team has previously maintained that all resignation and registration procedures were followed to the letter.

As Obi prepares for his next political chapter having recently defected to the African Democratic Congress (ADC) the ghost of 2023 continues to haunt the headlines. For many Nigerians, Justice Salami’s intervention is a reminder that the rules of the game are just as important as the players, especially as the nation begins to look toward the 2027 polls.