The judgment reportedly delivered by Justice Peter Lifu directing the deregistration of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Accord Party and other political parties is, with profound respect, one of the most legally indefensible decisions to emerge from the Federal High Court in recent times. It is a constitutional non sequitur, a jurisdictional misadventure, and, having regards to the undisputed facts concerning the subsisting order of the Court of Appeal, a complete nullity in law.
The judgment appears fundamentally predicated on a grave misunderstanding of Section 225A of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, 1999 (as amended).
Section 225A provides:
“The Independent National Electoral Commission shall have power to deregister political parties on the following grounds –
(a) breach of any of the requirements for registration; and
(b) failure to win at least twenty-five per cent of votes cast in-
(i) one State of the Federation in a Presidential election; or
(ii) one Local Government Area in a Governorship election; or
(iii) one ward in a Chairmanship election; or
(iv) one seat in the National or State Assembly election; or
(v) one seat in a Councillorship election.”
The language of the Constitution is clear, simple and incapable of distortion.
The thresholds stipulated in Section 225A(b) are plainly DISJUNCTIVE and not CONJUNCTIVE. The Constitution repeatedly employs the word “OR” between the various conditions. Consequently, satisfaction of any one of the listed conditions is sufficient.
A political party is not required to secure 25% of votes in a presidential election before it can continue to exist as a registered political party. That proposition is nowhere found in the Constitution.
On the contrary, the Constitution expressly provides that securing 25% of votes in one ward in a chairmanship election, 25% of votes in one Local Government Area in a governorship election, or winning a single councillorship seat, a State Assembly seat or a National Assembly seat is sufficient evidence of electoral viability.
Any interpretation requiring every political party to obtain 25% in a presidential election is therefore a complete inversion of the constitutional text.
The apparent error arises from a conflation of Section 225A with Section 134 of the Constitution.
Section 134 governs the election of a President and prescribes the threshold a presidential candidate must attain before being declared elected President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. It has absolutely no connection with the constitutional criteria governing the deregistration of political parties.
To import the presidential threshold under Section 134 into Section 225A is not interpretation but judicial legislation. The Supreme Court has repeatedly held that courts cannot read into the Constitution words that are not there. See A.G. Federation v. Abubakar (2007) 10 NWLR (Pt. 1041) 1 and INEC v. Musa (2003) 3 NWLR (Pt. 806) 72.
Even more fundamentally, Section 225A does not vest deregistration powers in the courts. The Constitution expressly provides that “The Independent National Electoral Commission shall have power to deregister political parties.”
The power is administrative, regulatory and fact-sensitive. It requires examination of election returns, records and results generated by INEC and the various State Independent Electoral Commissions throughout the Federation. Whether a political party has met the constitutional threshold is a factual determination entrusted in the first instance to INEC and not to the courts.
The court’s role, where necessary, is supervisory and adjudicatory, not administrative.
The judgment therefore appears to constitute an unconstitutional usurpation of powers expressly vested in INEC.
Furthermore, the plaintiffs, the amorphous National Association of Former Legislators appear manifestly devoid of locus standi. They have suffered no personal injury, legal grievance or infringement of any constitutional right arising from the continued registration of ADC, Accord Party or any other political party. The settled law is that locus standi is the gateway to jurisdiction. See Adesanya v. President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (1981) 2 NCLR 358 and Thomas v. Olufosoye (1986) 1 NWLR (Pt. 18) 669.
Absent a legally recognizable injury, there is no cause of action. Absent a cause of action, there is no jurisdiction.
The absurdity of the judgment is further exposed by the publicly available electoral history of ADC. Registered since 2006, ADC has consistently participated in elections across Nigeria and has won elective offices at different levels of government. It has secured councillorship positions, legislative representation and participated in successive general elections, including the 2023 elections, where it won 2 Federal Constituency elections in Kogi State and 7 State constituency elections, including that of the immediate past Minority Leader of the Benue State House of Assembly, Hon. Cephas Dyako of Konshisha State Constituency, Benue. At various times it has also had serving legislators, including senators who recently defected to the party, within its ranks. These facts are matters of public record and were reportedly contained in INEC’s counter-affidavit before the court.
Most alarming, however, is the fact that the Court of Appeal had granted a stay of proceedings and directed parties to await the determination of the pending interlocutory appeal.
This fact changes everything.
Once the Court of Appeal granted a stay of proceedings, the Federal High Court became functus officio with respect to further adjudication in the matter pending the determination of the appeal. Any proceedings conducted thereafter were conducted without jurisdiction.
The law on this point is elementary and settled beyond controversy.
In Vaswani Trading Co. v. Savalakh & Co. (1972) 12 SC 77, Ojukwu v. Military Governor of Lagos State (1986) 1 NWLR (Pt. 18) 621, and a long line of authorities, the Supreme Court emphasized that obedience to orders of superior courts is the bedrock of the administration of justice.
A lower court proceeding in the face of a subsisting order of stay issued by a superior court is not merely committing an error of law. It is engaging in conduct that appellate courts have repeatedly condemned as judicial overreach and an affront to judicial hierarchy.
In those circumstances, the proceedings culminating in the judgment are liable to be declared a nullity irrespective of the merits. As established in Madukolu v. Nkemdilim (1962) 2 SCNLR 341, where jurisdiction is absent, the entire proceedings, no matter how brilliantly conducted, collapse like a pack of cards.
In the final analysis, this judgment is a constitutional non sequitur. It misconstrues Section 225A, conflates it with Section 134, ignores the disjunctive nature of the constitutional thresholds, usurps powers vested exclusively in INEC, disregards the settled law on locus standi, overlooks uncontroverted electoral records, and was delivered in defiance of a subsisting order of the Court of Appeal.
For those reasons, it deserves to be rejected as a legally unsustainable exercise of judicial power and, since the appellate record confirms the existence of the stay of proceedings, a nullity that cannot stand for a single moment in a constitutional democracy governed by the rule of law.
The parties, the appellate court and all well meaning Nigerians including INEC must reject it for what it is before another “Judge Bassey Ikpeme” reincarte deploys judicial overreach to truncate the 4th Republic.
Alex Ter Adum, PhD
Secretary D-37
alexadum45@gmail.com
