Gombe PDP's rerun put Pantami back on top. INEC's own register dates came before he left the APC

On Tuesday, 29 September 2026, the Gombe State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party held a repeat governorship primary. Press reports put the result at 2,054 votes for Professor Isa Ali Ibrahim Pantami, a former Minister of Communications and Digital Economy, 389 for Khamisu Ahmed Mailantarki and 112 for Usman Aliyu Garry. By the following day Mailantarki was rejecting the outcome in public, as First Daily News reported. He argued that Pantami was not eligible to stand at all. According to First Daily News, he alleged that Pantami's name was absent from the PDP membership register that went to the Independent National Electoral Commission within the statutory period. Vero Record has not seen the returning officer's result sheet. The vote figures here are the ones the press reported, and they add up to 2,555 votes cast for the three aspirants.

The rerun was ordered by a court. On Thursday, 24 September 2026, the Federal High Court sitting in Gombe set aside the PDP's earlier primary of 26 May 2026 and ordered a fresh one within a month, according to Sahara Reporters, PRNigeria, The Telegraph and others. Sahara Reporters and The Telegraph name the judge as Justice Amina Aliyu Mohammed. TVC News attributes the verdict to Justice Adamu Jauro, and Legit.ng mentions a Supreme Court verdict by a Justice Adamu Jauro in the same story. Those accounts cannot all be right, and Vero Record could not settle the question because we could not find the judgment, the suit number or a certified true copy anywhere in the public record. Nothing in this article relies on the judge's name.

Reports also differ on who sued and on what grounds. Sahara Reporters describes Garry as the plaintiff and Pantami and the PDP as defendants, with the argument that the party had not run a valid primary under its own rules and the electoral law. The Telegraph says Mailantarki and Garry both filed suits, and that the court found the process had excluded aspirants who were screened and cleared. PRNigeria reports that the court dismissed a separate case brought by Abdulkadir Hamma Saleh, but held that the party had to repeat the primary because it had not formally notified the disqualified aspirants. All of these are press accounts of a document we have not read, so we grade them B.

The one point on which the press accounts and the party agree is the membership question. On 25 September the Gombe PDP publicity secretary, Abdulkadir Ahmed Dukku, announced the rerun date. TVC News and Legit.ng report that the party said it welcomed the part of the ruling that, in the party's words, validated Pantami's PDP membership and his participation in the May 2026 primary. That is the party's description of the judgment, not the judgment itself. It is also the point that Mailantarki now contests.

The dates that matter can be checked against INEC's own paperwork. On Friday, 27 March 2026, INEC issued a signed press release headed "Re: Revised Timetable and Schedule of Activities for 2027 General Election". Vero Record downloaded and read it. The release says parties were "free to fix the dates of their primaries within the approved period from the 23rd of April 2026 to the 30th of May 2026". It says the register of party members "must be submitted to INEC not later than 21 days before the holding of their respective primaries", and it ties that rule to "Section 77(4) of the Electoral Act, 2026". It set the final deadline for registers at 10 May 2026. The release is signed by Mohammed Kudu Haruna, National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee.

A second INEC release, dated 15 May 2026 and also signed by Haruna, says that "all 22 registered political parties have successfully submitted their membership registers" and that "all registered parties submitted their registers as of 8th May 2026, two days before the extended deadline." Vero Record read that document as well. It does not give the date on which the PDP's register arrived, and it does not say whether parties could later add names.

Pantami's own side supplies the date he left his former party. According to Sahara Reporters' account of the proceedings, his counsel told the court that he resigned from the All Progressives Congress on 19 May 2026. Several outlets, including PRNigeria, reported in May that he had withdrawn from the APC's governorship process on the eve of that party's primary, in protest at a consensus arrangement that produced Jamilu Gwamna as the APC's choice. On 26 May he was declared the PDP's candidate by voice affirmation as the sole aspirant, according to Sahara Reporters, which quoted the PDP electoral panel chairman, Gregory Yenlong.

Put side by side, and this is Vero Record's own reading, graded C: INEC says every party's register was with the commission by 8 May. Pantami's lawyers say he was still an APC member until 19 May, eleven days later. A primary held on 26 May would have needed a register filed by 5 May under the 21-day rule as INEC stated it. A primary held on 29 September would have needed one filed by 8 September. Nothing we have read shows a PDP register submitted to INEC after 8 May that carries Pantami's name. Nothing we have read shows that no such register exists either. INEC does not publish party registers or the dates they are filed.

That is not the same as saying Pantami is ineligible. We have not read the gazetted text of the Electoral Act 2026. The substance of Section 77(5), which as reported by legal commentators limits voting and candidacy in a primary to members whose names are on a register submitted in time, comes from secondary accounts. A court may have read the provision differently, found that another rule governs aspirants rather than voters, or relied on facts that do not appear in any press account. The four PDP aspirants who objected in May made a different argument, according to Sahara Reporters and PRNigeria: that the law does not allow a politician who took part in one party's primary process to seek another party's ticket in the same cycle. The published record does not show how the court dealt with either argument.

There is a further complication with the timetable itself. On 21 and 22 May 2026, Channels Television and The Telegraph reported that a Federal High Court in Abuja, in a suit brought by the Youth Party, had voided INEC's timetable for primaries and nominations, including the 10 May register deadline. Vero Record has not seen that judgment and does not know whether it was appealed or stayed. INEC's releases after that date still cite the same schedule.

The rerun also came late in the calendar. A BusinessDay summary of INEC's original 2027 timetable, published on 27 February 2026, gave 19 September 2026 as the last day for withdrawal and substitution of governorship candidates. That timetable was later revised, and we could not obtain the revised governorship schedule from INEC: the commission's new website at inecnigeria.org serves nomination forms and some press releases but did not return a timetable document when we searched it on 30 September. INEC has handled late, court-driven changes before. A release dated 12 August 2026, which Vero Record downloaded from the commission's website, says it added the Social Democratic Party's Osun governorship candidate to the ballot three days before the election "in compliance with the judgment of the Federal High Court, Abuja, delivered on 22nd July 2026 in Suit No. FHC/ABJ/CS/344/2026".

INEC has also set out, in writing, how narrow its own role is. In a release dated 1 September 2026, responding to claims by the Nigeria Democratic Congress, the commission said: "Candidate nomination is, by law, the exclusive responsibility of political parties. INEC has no legal authority to select, insert, or substitute a candidate for any party. Monitoring a party's primary is a statutory oversight function only and confers no power on INEC to choose or impose a candidate." It added that candidate lists are submitted on Form EC9 signed by each party's national chairman and national secretary. On that account, whatever name the PDP national leadership forwards from the Gombe rerun is the name INEC will process, unless a court orders otherwise.

Mailantarki has said his lawyers wrote to the PDP and to INEC before the rerun to question Pantami's eligibility, according to First Daily News. Garry is reported to have alleged voting irregularities in his area. Neither letter has been published, and neither man has, as far as the public record shows, filed a fresh suit over the 29 September result. Nothing in this article suggests that any candidate committed an offence. The dispute is about eligibility under party and electoral rules, and only a court can settle it.

Three documents would answer the question: the Federal High Court judgment of 24 September with its suit number, the PDP register filed with INEC for Gombe State with its date of receipt, and INEC's revised governorship timetable with the current substitution deadline. Vero Record searched the INEC website, press coverage and the Internet Archive for each of them and did not find any of the three in public. The PDP, the commission and the parties' lawyers can publish them. Until they do, the only dated primary records in public are INEC's own, and they place the register deadline before the day Pantami says he left the APC.

What this rests on

Four signed INEC press releases read in full (27 March, 15 May, 12 August and 1 September 2026); press reports of the 24 September judgment, the 26 May and 29 September primaries and Pantami's 19 May resignation date; Vero Record's own date arithmetic, which is marked as such.

What this does not establish

The judgment text, suit number and presiding judge (reports conflict); whether any PDP register naming Pantami was filed after 8 May; the exact wording of Electoral Act 2026 s.77(5); the revised governorship substitution deadline; whether the Youth Party judgment voiding the timetable still stands; the official rerun result sheet.