INEC Portal in Spotlight as NDRA Flags Egwuaba’s Dual Role

2027 Election Watch, Breaking News, Politics

INEC Portal in Spotlight as NDRA Flags Egwuaba’s Dual Role

A fresh electoral storm is gathering around INEC after NDRA accused the commission of listing Barr. Reuben Egwuaba as legal adviser to two different parties at once, a development the group says may amount to a direct breach of Nigeria’s amended electoral law. What began as an apparent record anomaly has now morphed into a…

Atlantic Post

May 3, 2026

4–5 minutes

APM, Breaking News, Electoral Act 2026, INEC, NDC, NDRA, Reuben Egwuaba

A fresh integrity storm has blown open around the Independent National Electoral Commission after a civil society group, Nigeria Democratic Rights Advocacy, alleged that the same lawyer, Barr. Reuben Egwuaba, is being listed on INEC’s official political party records as National Legal Adviser to both the Allied Peoples Movement and the Nigeria Democratic Congress.

On the INEC portal, the APM page names Egwuaba directly, while the NDC page lists him as National Legal Adviser “by court order”, a detail that has now become the centre of a growing legal and political controversy.

The alarm, first raised by NDRA in a statement signed by its General Secretary, Julius Aondowase, is not being framed as a routine filing error. The group says it observed “disturbing inconsistencies” in official records and insists the matter goes beyond clerical confusion.

In its words, “This is not a clerical oversight; it is a serious legal contradiction with far-reaching implications.”

NDRA also warned that the position of National Legal Adviser is a core office in a party’s National Executive Committee and cannot reasonably sit alongside divided party allegiance.

At the heart of the dispute is Nigeria’s tightened electoral framework. The House of Representatives, in March 2026, amended the Electoral Act 2026 to criminalise dual membership of political parties.

Voice of Nigeria reported that the amendment introduces new subsections to Section 77, makes it unlawful for a person to belong to more than one party at the same time, and prescribes a fine of N10 million or up to two years in prison for offenders.

The report also noted that the offence applies where a person “knowingly” registers or maintains such membership.

That is why NDRA’s allegation has travelled beyond party politics and into the territory of possible statutory breach.

The group argues that if one individual is shown on INEC’s own portal as occupying a senior legal office in two different parties at once, then the issue is not merely embarrassing but potentially criminal.

It said the public deserves either an immediate correction, or a full explanation of how such conflicting records were officially documented.

The controversy is sharpened by the fact that the two INEC pages do not tell the same story in the same way. The APM page states plainly that Barr. Reuben Egwuaba is the party’s National Legal Adviser.

The NDC page, meanwhile, also names him as National Legal Adviser, but marks that entry “by court order”. That single phrase may prove decisive.

It could point to a judicial intervention, a disputed party structure, or an unresolved administrative mismatch. But as it stands, it also raises the obvious question: how does the same name end up anchoring legal office in two different parties on the regulator’s own platform?

This is where the case becomes more than a social media talking point. INEC’s portal is not a gossip board. It is the public face of electoral record-keeping.

When its data appears to endorse a potentially unlawful political arrangement, the damage is not only to the parties involved but to confidence in the regulator itself.

NDRA’s warning that “political parties must not become safe havens for legal contradictions” is therefore not just activist language. It speaks directly to the credibility test now facing INEC, especially as the 2026 electoral reforms are supposed to tighten compliance rather than weaken it.

There is, however, an important counterpoint that prevents instant verdicts. Vanguard reported that when contacted, INEC’s Deputy Director of Voter Education and Publicity, Wilfred Ifogah, said the lawyer had reportedly resigned from APM and was now a member of NDC, adding that the portal would be updated if APM had not formally notified the commission.

That suggests the issue may involve timing, communication gaps, or delayed updates rather than a deliberate attempt to run two party loyalties simultaneously. Even so, the existence of the APM entry on the portal shows why the matter cannot be dismissed casually.

For now, the public record leaves three competing possibilities. First, Egwuaba may have properly exited one party and the portal simply has not caught up.

Second, the “by court order” annotation may mean the NDC listing rests on judicial direction that has not been fully reconciled with other records.

Third, there may indeed be a deeper compliance problem involving dual affiliation in breach of Section 77 as amended.

Only a direct INEC clarification, supported by the relevant party registers and any court documents, can settle which of these is true.

What is already clear is that the case has exposed another fragile seam in Nigeria’s electoral architecture. A law designed to stop political double-dealing now faces its first big public stress test in the digital age, where one official website can trigger a national scandal in hours.

If NDRA is right, the issue is a clean-cut violation. If INEC is right, then the commission must move quickly to clean up its records and show that the system can still distinguish between a legal office, a party office and a legal mistake. Either way, the burden now sits on the regulator to explain itself without delay.