Isa Pantami, candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the 2027 governorship of Gombe, may be heading to the courts against the Indedpendent National Electoral Commission (INEC) for omitting his name from the final list of candidates recently released by the commission.
This indication came via a letter dated October 12 and addressed to Joash Amupitan, INEC Chairman, where lawyers to the former Minister gave the commission until Wednesday to reverse its position and publish his name on the final governorship.
Raji, A.T. Kehinde, Abdul Mohammed, Wale Balogun and Tunde Falola, in the letter told the INEC boss that only the courts had the powers to remove the name of a candidate duly nominated, adding that INEC’s role in primaries is to attend, observe, monitor and report, “not to disqualify, and not to cherry-pick.”
INEC, which did not state its reason for the action, when it released the names of 16 governorship candidates for Gombe, while omitting that of Pantami and his running mate, had identified Jamil Gwamna as the All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship candidate, with Balah Adams as his running mate.
Part of the letter read: “The PDP submitted his personal particulars (Form EC9) to the Commission on the 8th day of August, 2026 pursuant to Section 29(1) of the Electoral Act, 2026, and the Commission published his name on the 29th day of August, 2026 pursuant to Section 29(3) of the Act. Up to this point, no step was taken by the Commission to question any aspect of his emergence.
“The May 26 primary was challenged in two suits, marked FHC/GM/CS/10/2026 and FHC/GM/CS/9/2026, before the Federal High Court in Gombe. In a judgement delivered on September 24, the court nullified the primary and directed the PDP to conduct a fresh governorship primary.
“In compliance with the Court Order, the PDP gave the Commission due notice of the court-ordered primary, and conducted the fresh gubernatorial primary election on Tuesday, the 29th day of September, 2026.”
“At the conclusion of that exercise, Isa Ali Ibrahim emerged the winner, and his name was again submitted to the Commission as the nominated candidate of the PDP.
“In the circumstances, we have our Client’s firm and unequivocal instructions to demand, and we hereby demand that the Commission, on or before Wednesday the 14th day of October, 2026, publish and circulate the name of Professor Isa Ali Ibrahim as the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party for the office of Governor of Gombe State in the 2027 general elections, in the same manner and with the same prominence as the names of all other candidates published on the 10th day of October, 2026.”