Ahead of the February 21, 2026 Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Area Council elections, dozens of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidates face possible disqualification, while the Labour Party (LP) has been completely excluded from the race.
INEC’s final list of candidates, released on September 22, 2025, shows that the Labour Party (LP) has no cleared candidates for the polls, making it the only one of Nigeria’s 16 registered parties absent from the FCT elections.
The PDP, which submitted 74 candidates for the six chairmanship, six vice-chairmanship and 62 councillorship seats, is threatened by unresolved leadership disputes at the national level.
On-going court cases over the party’s leadership have cast doubt on the legality of its primaries, raising the possibility that all its candidates could be invalidated if the courts rule against the faction that conducted them.
The PDP crisis stems from a struggle between factions led by Tanimu Turaki and AbdulRahman Mohammed, the latter reportedly backed by FCT Minister Nyesom Wike.
Meanwhile, Labour Party’s exclusion is linked to its own leadership tussle between the Julius Abure faction and the Nenadi Usman-led caretaker committee, which INEC recognises. Failure to resolve the dispute before the deadline meant the party could not upload candidates.
Observers warn that the twin crises could shrink voter choice and tilt the contest. Transition Monitoring Group chairman, Auwal Rafsanjani, cautioned that unresolved internal party conflicts risk weakening democracy by sidelining opposition parties.
A similar scenario in 2019 saw the Supreme Court nullify party votes in Zamfara and Rivers states over flawed nominations — a precedent that could loom over the FCT polls.
