The Court of Appeal called this judge’s last ruling against the ADC “judicial rascality.” On Thursday, he ruled against the party again. Nobody has shown who, if anyone, is behind it. Everybody can see who benefits.
On Thursday, November 5, Justice Peter Lifu of the Federal High Court in Abuja declared the caretaker committee led by Senator David Mark that has run the African Democratic Congress, set aside the party’s national officers, including National Secretary Rauf Aregbesola, and nullified the primary that produced Atiku Abubakar as its presidential candidate. Premium Times reports that the judgment also removes every candidate the party submitted to INEC for the 2027 elections. A senior advocate quoted by the paper puts the consequence plainly: if it stands, the ADC has no candidate for any elective office, from the presidency to the House of Assembly.
The presidential election is on Saturday, January 16, 2027. That is ten weeks away.
The ADC says it has filed an appeal and a stay of execution, and has notified INEC. INEC says it has not yet received a certified copy of the judgment. Nigerians now wait to see which comes first, a ruling from the Court of Appeal or a decision by the electoral commission.
What the case is, and is not
Start with what is not in dispute. This is not a suit brought by the ruling party. The plaintiff, Nafiu Bala Gombe, is a former National Deputy Chairman (North-East) of the ADC. He argues that the Mark-led committee took over the party unlawfully after former national chairman Ralph Nwosu’s departure, and that he was entitled to lead it. The suit was filed in 2025. It went through the Court of Appeal, which on March 12 dismissed an interlocutory appeal by the Mark-led faction and ordered the status quo kept, after which INEC stopped recognising either warring faction, and through the Supreme Court, which, according to a chronology published by TheNiche, sent it back for an expedited trial that ended before Justice Lifu. Justice Lifu held that the Mark-led leadership violated the ADC’s own constitution and the Electoral Act.
That is a long procedural road with serious steps on it, and the ADC cannot wave it away as an ambush.
But the ADC has serious points too. On July 2, Justice Musa Liman of the same court ruled in another suit that the Mark-led committee was legitimate and directed INEC to recognise it. Atiku says Thursday’s judgment contradicts that ruling. The party’s campaign council says a court of coordinate jurisdiction cannot undo another’s judgment, and that INEC monitored the July 2025 meeting at the centre of the dispute and found the transition consistent with the party’s constitution. Those are claims for the Court of Appeal to settle, and they should be settled quickly.
The judge, the appeal court and the earlier ruling
There is a fact in this story that no commentator on either side should skip. In June, Justice Lifu ordered INEC to deregister the ADC and four other parties for poor electoral performance. The Court of Appeal had ordered him on May 22 to halt proceedings pending appeal, and on June 16 it stayed the judgment. In late July, a three-judge panel led by Justice Abba Mohammed vacated the ruling as a nullity. It called the judge’s decision to proceed in the face of its order “judicial rascality” and “the highest form of judicial impertinence,” and held that the parties remained registered. The ADC has petitioned the National Judicial Council over it, and we have not seen the outcome.
Those are the Court of Appeal’s words, not the opposition’s. The same judge has now ruled against the same party twice within five months, and the first time the higher court said he had defied it. Whatever the merits of Thursday’s judgment, that history is exactly why the opposition’s alarm cannot be dismissed as sour grapes. It is also true that, according to TheNiche’s account, the leadership case came to him after the Supreme Court’s remittal, and nothing we have seen says he chose it.
What nobody has shown
Atiku says the timing of the judgment is no coincidence, coming a day after his campaign rally in Sokoto. The ADC calls it a calculated attempt to weaken the party. Aviation Minister Festus Keyamo, an APC figure, welcomed the judgment, saying the court applied the law to the facts and that the ADC remains a party with other leaders.
This newspaper cannot tell you that the Presidency or the APC engineered the suit, because we have seen no evidence that either did, and the ADC has not produced any. We can tell you that Thursday’s judgment is a gift to the party in power regardless of who wrote it, and that this is exactly the point the opposition made first. Peter Ameh, the Nigeria Democratic Congress candidate for Kogi East, told opposition politicians not to celebrate: “Today’s victory for one camp is tomorrow’s weapon against another.”
He is speaking from experience. In June, a Federal High Court in Lokoja set aside its own earlier judgment and deregistered his party, the NDC, the platform of Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso. On September 18, the Court of Appeal restored it by a 2-1 majority, calling the Lokoja decision an abuse of power for sitting in review of its own judgment. When Ameh says the same process can be turned on anyone, he is describing something that has already happened to him.
This did not start with Tinubu
To be fair, using the courts to settle which faction owns a party is not new or the work of one government. In 2019 the Supreme Court left the APC without candidates in Zamfara and Rivers over disputes about its primaries. Nigeria has a deep culture of pre-election litigation, and parties of every colour have fed it. The ADC’s own house was already on fire before Thursday: Peter Obi left the party in May, citing internal crises, legal disputes and hostility within its structures. A party that cannot settle its leadership without a judge has handed a judge the power to settle it.
But the danger is the same whoever started it. An opposition tied up in litigation has less time, money and attention for voters. A ruling party does not need to beat every rival at the polls if its rivals are fighting court battles in the final weeks. And if courts rule on candidates close to an election, then judges, and not voters, begin to decide the field.
The France question
The draft sent to this desk also asks whether this is France’s old political playbook arriving in Nigeria. We have kept the question, but we must be precise about it, because nothing we have seen connects France to this judgment, and the draft’s author concedes as much.
The historical point is real. After independence, France kept close ties with its former colonies through economic agreements, military cooperation and close relationships with political leaders, a system known as Françafrique. Critics have long said it left those countries less able to act independently, and it was France’s loss of ground in Mali, Burkina Faso and Niger that made Nigeria more important to Paris. President Tinubu made a state visit to France on November 28 and 29, 2024, the first by a Nigerian head of state in more than two decades, during which declarations on cooperation, including critical minerals, were signed. President Macron hosted him for a private dinner on September 17 this year. Nigerians have not been told what was discussed.
Those facts raise a fair sovereignty question about what Nigeria agrees to abroad. They say nothing about what a Nigerian judge decided in Abuja on Thursday. Joining the two invites the government to wave away the real issue by pointing to the weaker one.
What should happen now?
The Court of Appeal should hear the ADC’s appeal and stay application quickly. Section 285 of the Constitution sets tight limits on pre-election appeals, by the usual reading, 14 days to file and 60 days to decide, which on that arithmetic puts the deadline in early January. INEC should say in writing what it will do about the ADC’s candidates while the appeal is pending, and publish the legal advice it relies on. The National Judicial Council should say what became of the ADC’s petition against Justice Lifu. And every party should publish its leadership records and primary results, so that fewer disputes end up in a courtroom in the first place.
Whichever way the appeal goes, the reasons must be good enough that the losing side cannot credibly say the judge acted for someone else. That is what is at stake, and not only for the ADC.
This is a United Continental Post editorial. It draws on reporting by Premium Times, Vanguard, Daily Trust, Blueprint, allAfrica, Naija News, New Telegraph, Opinion Nigeria, The Whistler, Nairametrics, TheCable, TheNiche, National Update, Metro Daily and Lawyard; statements by the ADC, Atiku Abubakar’s campaign, INEC and Minister Festus Keyamo; and published coverage of France’s relations with Nigeria. Allegations of political interference are the ADC’s and have not been substantiated. Atiku Abubakar and the ADC have appealed the judgment of November 5.
