Deregistration Battle: Appeal Court Withholds Verdict On ADC, Others
The legal survival of the African Democratic Congress and four other political parties now rests with the Court of Appeal in Abuja, which on Tuesday reserved judgment in a cluster of appeals seeking to overturn a Federal High Court order that would strike the parties off the register barely a year before the 2027 general elections.
A panel of three justices led by Justice Abba Bello Mohammed, sitting with Justices Donatus Okorowo and Oyebisi Oyewumi, closed proceedings after counsel to all sides adopted their briefs of argument and made final submissions. The court said the date for judgment would be communicated to the parties, leaving the ADC, the Action Peoples Party, the Action Alliance, the Accord Party and the Zenith Labour Party in a period of legal suspense that carries direct consequences for the shape of the next general elections.
The appeals were filed by the five parties and by the Independent National Electoral Commission, all of which were defendants at the trial court. Counsel to the Accord Party, Musibau Adetunbi, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, urged the appellate court to allow the appeal and set aside the lower court’s decision, which he described as a nullity, arguing that the trial judge reached findings and conclusions that were not supported by law. For the plaintiff, the National Forum of Former Legislators, Yakubu Ruba, also a Senior Advocate, asked the court to dismiss the appeals and award substantial costs against the appellants.
The dispute traces back to suit number FHC/ABJ/CS/2637/2026, in which the National Forum of Former Legislators asked the Federal High Court to compel INEC to deregister the five parties. Justice Peter Lifu delivered judgment on June 15, ordering the commission to remove the parties from its register, barring it from recognising them, accepting nominations from them or permitting them to participate in the 2027 general elections, and directing the parties to stop presenting themselves as registered political associations. The judge found merit in the argument that the parties had failed to satisfy the constitutional benchmarks for continued registration.
Those benchmarks sit in Section 225A of the 1999 Constitution, introduced through the Fourth Alteration in 2018. The provision empowers INEC to deregister a party that breaches its registration requirements, or that fails to win at least 25 per cent of votes in one state in a presidential election or one local government area in a governorship election, or fails to win at least one ward in a chairmanship poll, one seat in the National or State Assembly, or one councillorship seat. The plaintiffs argued that the five parties met none of these thresholds in the 2023 general elections and the by-elections that followed, making their continued recognition unconstitutional. The Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice, Lateef Fagbemi, a Senior Advocate who was joined in the suit, supported that position, contending that INEC would remain in breach of its constitutional duty for as long as the parties stayed on the register.
What lifts this case above a routine electoral dispute is how the judgment was reached, and the collision between two courts that followed it. On May 22, the Court of Appeal had directed Justice Lifu to halt proceedings pending the determination of an interlocutory appeal, an appeal that grew out of his refusal to join Osun State Governor Ademola Adeleke, who has a political interest in the Accord Party, to the suit. The judge proceeded to judgment regardless. On June 16, the appellate court stayed the execution of his ruling and delivered an unusually blunt rebuke, describing his conduct as “a form of judicial impertinence” and recalling that the Supreme Court had previously held that a judge who acts in such a manner is unfit for the bench, conduct it branded “judicial rascality.” A civil society organisation subsequently petitioned the National Judicial Council and the Chief Justice of Nigeria over the affair. The hearing of the substantive appeals, initially adjourned to July 7, culminated in Tuesday’s reserved judgment.
Earlier the same day, the panel cleared a procedural hurdle, dismissing an application by a faction of the Action Alliance that sought to replace the party’s counsel in one of the appeals. In a unanimous ruling, the court held that Yakubu Mahdi was validly briefed by the recognised leadership of the Action Alliance and remained the lawful counsel in appeal number CA/ABJ/CV/854/2026, ordering the applicants to pay costs.
The stakes are heightened by the political weight the ADC now carries. Once a minor party, it was adopted on July 3, 2025 as the platform of a broad opposition coalition assembled to challenge President Bola Tinubu and the All Progressives Congress in 2027. Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, who left the Peoples Democratic Party for the coalition, 2023 Labour Party candidate Peter Obi, former Kaduna Governor Nasir El-Rufai, former Transportation Minister Rotimi Amaechi and others rallied behind the party, with former Senate President David Mark installed as interim national chairman and former Osun Governor Rauf Aregbesola as interim national secretary. A deregistration upheld on appeal would dismantle that vehicle and force a scramble for an alternative platform on the eve of the polls.
The party has also been battling an internal leadership crisis that reached the Supreme Court, which affirmed the leadership headed by David Mark. On the strength of that judgment, INEC has said it recognises only the Mark leadership, and its National Commissioner, Mohammed Haruna, confirmed that the faction had been granted access to the nomination portal and had submitted candidates for 471 positions, comprising two presidential slots, 109 senatorial seats and 360 House of Representatives constituencies. That recognition is itself contested, with the party demanding that a rival claimant, Nafiu Bala, be investigated and prosecuted over what INEC described as a forged claim of portal access. The Accord Party carries its own electoral significance, being tied to Governor Adeleke’s re-election bid ahead of the Osun governorship election slated for August 15.
The history of party deregistration in Nigeria gives the pending judgment its context. INEC first exercised deregistration powers under the Electoral Act, removing 39 parties between 2011 and 2013. After the Fourth Alteration gave the power constitutional footing, the commission moved again on February 6, 2020, when its chairman, Mahmood Yakubu, announced the deregistration of 74 of the 92 parties then on the register, leaving 18, on the ground that they had won no office in the 2019 general elections. The ADC, the Accord Party, the Action Alliance and the Zenith Labour Party were among the 18 that survived that purge. The affected parties resisted through the courts, producing conflicting judgments until the Supreme Court settled the principle on May 7, 2021 in the National Unity Party case, holding that Section 225A is self executing and vests INEC with clear authority to delist non performing parties. An earlier Court of Appeal decision in 2020 had reinstated 22 of the deregistered parties, insisting that even a valid administrative power must be exercised in line with the right to fair hearing under Section 36 of the Constitution.
That thread of due process runs through the current controversy. In the 2020 exercise, deregistration flowed from INEC’s own audit of election results. In the present case, the move was set in motion not by the commission but by a private suit and a court order, with INEC itself now appealing against the outcome. Whether Section 225A can be triggered in that manner, and whether the process that produced Justice Lifu’s judgment satisfied the fair hearing standard the courts have repeatedly stressed, are among the questions the appellate panel must resolve.
For now, the stay of execution granted on June 16 remains in force, which means the five parties retain their legal status and the ADC can continue its 2027 preparations until the Court of Appeal speaks. The eventual judgment, whichever way it falls, is almost certain to travel to the Supreme Court, given the constitutional questions at play and the political capital invested in the outcome. Until then, the fate of a coalition built to reshape the 2027 contest hangs on a date the court has yet to fix.