The Supreme Court has affirmed the nomination of Ekiti State Governor, Biodun Oyebanji, as the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate in the June 20, 2026 governorship election, bringing the legal challenge against his emergence to an end.

In a unanimous judgment delivered on Friday, a five-member panel of the apex court dismissed the appeal filed by APC aspirant, Mrs. Abimbola Olawumi, describing it as lacking merit. The ruling upheld the earlier decision of the Court of Appeal, which had validated Oyebanji’s nomination as the party’s governorship candidate.

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Delivering the lead judgment, Justice Mohammed Idris upheld preliminary objections challenging the competence of applications filed by Olawumi to regularise her notice of appeal and appellant’s brief. The court held that one of the accompanying written addresses was unsigned, while its pagination exceeded the limits prescribed by the Supreme Court Rules. Consequently, the applications and the related written addresses were struck out.

The apex court also ruled that the first three grounds of appeal were incompetent because they did not arise from the judgment of the Court of Appeal. It further held that the appellate court was right to declare Olawumi’s brief incompetent despite her pending application for regularisation.

The Supreme Court declined the appellant’s request to invoke its powers to determine the substantive suit, noting that the Federal High Court had already ruled that the case was statute-barred and that the constitutional 180-day time limit for determining pre-election matters had expired.

The judgment effectively ends all legal disputes over Oyebanji’s nomination as the APC governorship candidate. Newsworld reports that Governor Oyebanji has since been declared the winner of the 2026 Ekiti State governorship election after polling 319,224 votes to defeat other candidates.