A Federal High Court ruling reversing an earlier order to register the National Democratic Congress (NDC) has reopened old wounds from the 2023 elections, even as it threatens the 2027 presidential ambitions of key opposition figures.
Justice Isah Dashen delivered the judgment penultimate Friday, setting aside the court’s December 10, 2025 order that had cleared the NDC for registration. The judge ruled that the earlier judgment had wrongly affected the rights of the Peace Movement Party (PMP), which was not joined in the suit despite claiming ownership of the logo used in the NDC’s registration bid.
NDC is the platform on which Peter Obi is running for president in January 2027, with former Kano State governor Rabiu Kwankwaso as his running mate.
Counsel for the applicant, C. S. Ekeocha, said the court ordered all parties back to their pre-December 10 positions and directed that PMP be joined so the dispute can be fully resolved. He said every action INEC took under the vacated judgment — including the NDC’s certificate of registration and any ballot inclusion — must now be withdrawn pending a fresh hearing.
The NDC has rejected the ruling as “bizarre.” National leader Seriake Dickson said the party has filed an appeal along with a stay of execution, and that INEC has granted it portal access to upload candidate names regardless. Dickson said Obi’s name and his own have already been uploaded, with the running mate’s to follow.
Suspicion of a bigger plan
The ruling lands amid growing suspicion that the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is working to clear obstacles from President Bola Tinubu’s path to a second term by squeezing opposition parties out of contention.
Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar, now the African Democratic Congress (ADC) presidential candidate, called it part of an orchestrated effort to frustrate viable opposition platforms. He warned that narrowing political choice could erode public trust in the electoral process and threaten national stability.
Senior lawyer Femi Falana (SAN) took direct aim at the legal basis of the ruling itself, arguing that a judge cannot lawfully overturn his own final judgment — a principle known as functus officio. He said any dissatisfied party should have gone to a higher court instead, and insisted the NDC’s primaries conducted under the original judgment remain valid in law. Falana further warned of a troubling pattern at the Federal High Court that he said risks pushing Nigeria toward a one-party system by deregistering opposition parties while leaving the APC untouched.
A pattern stretching back to 2023
The controversy has revived unresolved debates from the 2023 election cycle, when courts decided several high-stakes disputes in ways critics called inconsistent or politically convenient.
Civil society group ActionAid, presenting at a Nigerian Guild of Editors conference in Yenagoa, flagged the surge in litigation as a symptom of declining trust in the ballot box. The group noted that election-related court cases rose from two in 1999 to 1,926 by 2023, arguing politicians increasingly see the judiciary — not the polls — as the real decider of election outcomes.
Its report pointed to the Plateau State cases, where conflicting rulings on PDP primaries first cost lawmakers their seats before the Supreme Court restored the governor’s mandate — a reprieve that never reached Assembly members with no further appeal option. It also revisited the Machina-Lawan Senate seat dispute, where the Supreme Court ultimately favoured Lawan on a technicality despite him not contesting the primary in question.
On the 2023 presidential tribunal, ActionAid highlighted two contested findings: the dismissal of the double-nomination claim against Vice President Kashim Shettima over his simultaneous Senate candidacy, and the tribunal’s rejection of a civil forfeiture case against Tinubu tied to a past US court order — a decision the group said conflicted with earlier Supreme Court reasoning on what constitutes forfeiture.
ActionAid tied the pattern to weak judicial independence, pointing to funding dependence on the executive, alleged corruption incentives, and political patronage networks that pressure courts during high-stakes disputes. It called for closer collaboration with editors and journalists to expose judicial misconduct and push for reform, arguing the media has a critical role in shaping public understanding of the issue.
The substantive case over NDC’s registration remains pending, with a fresh hearing expected once all parties are joined.
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