Three courts, one verdict: how Sandy Onor's challenge to Cross River's 2023 governorship result failed at every level

INEC’s own final list of candidates for the 2027 presidential election - not a newspaper’s reprint of it, but the signed commission document, which we downloaded from inecnigeria.org and read - carries this candidacy on page 3 of three. The entry is printed surname first, as "ONOR SANDY OJANG", against PDP, age 60, with UMARU BABANGIDA (61) as running mate. The list is signed on every page by Rose Oriaran-Anthony, Secretary of the Commission. It names eighteen presidential candidates, two more than most published summaries of the field. The qualifications filed with the commission are printed as FSLC W.A.S.C. PH.D.

The commission’s two documents give the firm outline. INEC’s signed final list prints the entry at page 3 as "ONOR SANDY OJANG", age 60, male, with Umaru Babangida, 61, as running mate, and qualifications of "FSLC W.A.S.C. PH.D" - a doctorate, filed. INEC’s register of political parties gives the Peoples Democratic Party’s national chairman as Hon. Abdulrahman Mohammed, so unlike four of the smaller parties on this ballot, the PDP has not nominated its own chairman.

That the PDP is fielding Onor at all is the part worth sitting with. This is the party that governed Nigeria from 1999 to 2015 and finished second in 2023; its 2027 candidate is a figure with no national profile, standing against a former vice-president who left the PDP for the African Democratic Congress and now runs against it. The register and the candidate list record the outcome of that realignment without explaining it, and we did not find a document that does.

When Sandy Ojang Onor left the Senate seat he had held for Cross River Central from 2019 to 2023 to run for governor, he lost. INEC declared the APC's Bassey Otu the winner with 258,619 votes to Onor's 179,636, with Otu taking 15 of the state's 18 local government areas — a margin wide enough that the result was not, on its face, a close call.

Onor and the PDP challenged it anyway, and the challenge is where the documentary record is richest. Their petition, numbered EPT/CR/Gov/2/2023, rested on three grounds: that Otu allegedly lacked the required educational qualification; that his deputy, Peter Odey, had allegedly held a prior disqualifying party membership; and a perjury and allegiance claim. The Cross River Governorship Election Petition Tribunal struck the petition out on 26 September 2023, rejecting each ground.

The appeals followed the ground down. The Court of Appeal affirmed Otu's election and dismissed Onor's appeal for lack of merit in November 2023. On 12 January 2024 the Supreme Court — the final arbiter, from which there is no further appeal — upheld Otu. Every tier of the Nigerian judiciary that heard the matter ruled the same way.

That unbroken line through three courts is the point a reader can trace: an INEC declaration, a single numbered petition, and three successive rulings, each reported contemporaneously and consistently. It is a cleaner record than most election disputes leave behind, precisely because the same petition number can be followed from tribunal to Supreme Court.

What it does not do is establish any wrongdoing by Onor. Losing an election petition is not misconduct; it means the allegations a petitioner brought were not sustained on the evidence, not that they were dishonestly made. A reader is entitled to note both that Onor's case failed completely and that failing it left no stain — the two are not in tension.

One caution belongs on the record. Onor is described here as a 2027 presidential aspirant; the current documentation does not confirm him as the PDP's settled candidate, and Vero does not assert it. The certified tribunal, appeal and Supreme Court judgments were also not retrieved directly — the suit number and quoted findings come from contemporaneous reporting, which the grade reflects.

What this rests on

The candidacy, the printed name, the age, the running mate and the filed qualifications rest on INEC’s own signed final list, read on the page. The suit number, the INEC vote figures and the identical outcome at all three court levels are corroborated across Vanguard, Channels TV, Sahara Reporters and Premium Times reporting dated to each ruling.

What this does not establish

We obtained nothing primary on Onor beyond INEC’s two documents. Nigeria’s free case-law database returns no judgment involving him, so the 2023 Cross River governorship petition - struck out, then affirmed on appeal and at the Supreme Court - is not available to us in any court’s own words; those judgments circulate only through paid law reporters, which we do not buy. His reported 2023 vote figures are press-sourced and remain unverified. It does not establish any wrongdoing, dishonesty or misconduct by Onor - only that his allegations against Otu were not upheld. The primary judgment documents themselves were not read; the suit number and quoted findings come from contemporaneous reporting, not the filings. Describing him as PDP's confirmed 2027 candidate is premature on the current record; he is an aspirant.