Anyone who has watched a hunting party in action will understand what is going on. What we have is a hunting expedition: beaters scour the bush, flushing the political parties—like duikers—towards INEC and the courts, where gunmen are properly positioned to take the killer shots.

The PDP is in Bello Turji’s captivity; the ADC is grappling with Unknown Gunmen; Seriake Dickson’s NDC is being dragged into the àbíkú forest; Accord and the SDP are closely watched by armed, sleeper-cell court cases. Other parties are peaceful because they are well-behaved neutered courtiers in the palace.

In 2026 Nigeria, opposition parties are food for the gods. Like fish in a point-and-kill pond, their days are troubled, nasty, numbered and short.

“Yesterday, I attended the most high-level caucus meeting with the NWC of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) in Abuja…” This was posted on Facebook on July 11, 2025, by Nafiu Bala. He is the plaintiff in the case that activated last week’s attempted murder of the ADC by INEC.

Attached to Nafiu Bala’s Facebook post are three photographs of several men and women at the party leadership meeting. I easily recognised David Mark seated at the centre. Nafiu Bala and Mark appear in the three photos.

I checked the Facebook post yesterday. It was still there on Bala’s timeline. Check. It should still be there as you read this. So, at what point did Nafiu Bala start dragging the national chairmanship of that party with David Mark? What changed, or what forced the change?

Apart from the ruling party, all other parties with the potential to field a presidential candidate in 2027 are in trouble. The courts have become the weapon—the poisoned arrows doing the killing.

Why are the courts allowing their sacred boots to be set upon the profane ground of this march of shame?

A former INEC top shot declared recently that if Nigeria dies, the blood should be traced to the soiled hands of lawyers – “both the bar and the bench.” I have a friend who also told me two days ago that every crisis in Nigeria today is a creation of either the law or lawyers and judges.

Whether in INEC or in the courts; in the executive or the legislature, my friend asked me to check if the bad rats were not, in fact, lawyers. I warned her to desist from such perfidious thinking. I reminded her that the law is an ass—and apart from its braying, what else does an ass offer?

As we argued back and forth, our conversation drifted, as such conversations often do, to those who die yet refuse to die—men whose voices linger long after their bodies have taken leave.

On Thursday last week in Lagos, the fifth memorial lecture in honour of our departed friend and brother, Yinka Odumakin, was held. Speaker after speaker invoked his spirit, saying what he would have said at a moment like this—when the courts have become weapons of mass destruction in the space allocated to democracy.

It was in that mood, at that event, that Mr. Femi Falana, Senior Advocate of Nigeria, sounded a warning on the coming election which may come without a contest, and the bad imprints of courts and lawyers all over the mess.

He said: “Through the manipulation of Nigerian courts and senior lawyers, you may have only one candidate contesting the presidential election in this country. If that happens, Nigeria may not even need to spend money on a presidential election.”

He listed a plethora of instances where courts and lawyers deploy the law as a jackboot, trampling the canvas of justice in service of masters far removed from the chambers of equity and fairness. The ADC case was the peg of speeches at the event.

Falana said: “The Independent National Electoral Commission, headed by a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, issued a statement yesterday that based on the intervention of the court, ‘ADC, we shall not longer recognise you.’ And if a political party is not recognised, its members are not contesting election.

“I say that INEC is wrong because the order granted by the court is, status quo ante bellum. You know, they use such terms to deceive us. What that means is, before the dispute, before the state of the war. So, who was in charge before that fellow went to court? It was David Mark. But that ruling has now been misinterpreted to favour the ruling party.

“When Nigerians say that the Tinubu government, the APC is trying to turn Nigeria into a one-party state, our courts and senior lawyers are to blame.

“I go to another political party that you know about. A man was destroying his political party, campaigning for the candidates of another party, asking the candidates of his own party to step down for the candidates of the ruling party. His party now said these activities were anti-party. The Federal High Court said, ‘Thou shall not suspend or expel him; he shall remain a member of that party, and continue to destroy the party.’ The same man has said, ‘Our party has no presidential candidate.’

“We are making these analyses not because APC, PDP, ADC are better (than one another); they are birds of a feather. But the Nigerian people must be allowed to choose among the oppressors who would govern them.

“What Nigeria is doing is a replica of what is going on in other African countries. A presidential election has just taken place in (one country). Opposition presidential candidates have been killed. Those who are lucky to be alive are in jail. In Tanzania, the most popular candidate was charged with treason, so while the election was going on, he was battling for his freedom.

“Our man who has just left here, (Omoyele) Sowore, of AAC, I’m sure you know he is facing many charges. So, instead of campaigning, Sowore would be making efforts not to be jailed. Even the other leader of the PDP has also been charged with contempt of court. In fact, the court made an order for his arrest, dead or alive, anywhere. They have temporarily suspended that, but he is going to be arraigned for contempt. So, at the end of the day, through the manipulation of Nigerian courts and senior lawyers, you may have only one candidate contesting the presidential election next year.

“My wife has assured me that with what is going on, Nigeria may have to save the money for the presidential election next year, because the way our courts are going, there will be no other candidate to challenge the candidate of the ruling party…”

Falana ended his speech with a call for struggle against the one-man democracy covering our field of play.

A few years ago, when the US Supreme Court was “on the rampage, rolling back progressive gains,” historian David Renton wrote that “rights are won through struggle, (they are) not handed down by the courts.” Indeed, the courts cannot give what they do not have.

As we interrogate the roles being played by lawyers and judges in our politics, and in shaping opposition politics, I think I should draw attention to the danger which a particular book and its author pose to the stability of our nation and the development of its democracy.

Exactly 300 years ago, Jonathan Swift’s ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ was published. It is a book of contempt that should never have been published. Indeed, I cannot understand how it has escaped lawyers’ punishment since 1726, when it was inflicted on humanity.

Like the popular hymn book, Songs of Praise (SoP), a good book should only sing and praise; it should see no evil and speak none. But this one, and its author, lack such wisdom. I read the book thoroughly in secondary school, so I know what I am talking about.

I am more concerned about the book straying into the subversive hands of politicians in Nigeria. Except our courts do something about it very urgently, politicians whose parties have died, or committed suicide, will start quoting from it to attack the courts and the My Lords who man them.

Now, consider this passage in that book of insults: “Judges… are picked out from the most dexterous lawyers, who are grown old or lazy, and having been biased all their lives against truth or equity, are under such a fatal necessity of favouring fraud, perjury and oppression, that I have known several of them to refuse a large bribe from the side where justice lay, rather than injure the faculty by doing anything unbecoming their nature in office” (Jonathan Swift, Gulliver’s Travels, p. 232).

Imagine that! To Jonathan Swift, judges would naturally refuse generous bribes from the innocent, since their professional disposition inclines them toward the discharge of the guilty.

If that is not contempt, then nothing is.

There is also this, again against lawyers and judges: “I said there was a society of men among us, bred up from their youth in the art of proving by words multiplied for the purpose, that white is black, and black is white, according as they are paid. To this society, all the rest of the people are slaves” (p. 231).

All lawyers know what stare decisis is. It is a legal doctrine which requires courts to follow established precedents. The aim is to ensure consistency, stability, and predictability in the interpretation of law.

The Romans expressed it fully as stare decisis et non quieta movere. Black’s Law Dictionary renders it in English as: “To adhere to precedents, and not to unsettle things which are established.” If you ask the lawyer next to your bedroom, he will tell you that the doctrine is the foundation of common law systems.

Now, imagine one audacious writer saying this of that noble doctrine: “It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind. These, under the name of precedents, they produce as authorities, to justify the most iniquitous opinions; and the judges never fail of decreeing accordingly” (p. 232).

And then this: “That laws are best explained, interpreted, and applied by those whose interests and abilities lie in perverting, confounding, and eluding them.”

We all know those who explain, interpret, and apply the law.

Even the law itself, as powerful as it is, has not escaped the insult of the irreverent writer. The author says in a 1707 essay, that “laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies but let wasps and hornets break through.”

Talking about lawyers and jargons. The reigning phrase at this moment in Nigeria is “status quo ante bellum.” Literally, it means “the state of affairs existing before the war.” There is a huge fire as we speak over what the speakers of Latin mean by the status quo ‘jargon’. The meaning is not hidden, but because INEC is headed by a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, the commission has its own unique definition of what it means.

“You know they use such terms to deceive us. What that means is ‘before the state of the war.’ So who was in charge before that fellow went to court? David Mark. Do you understand me? But that ruling has now been misinterpreted to favour the ruling party,” Mr Femi Falana said on Thursday while weighing in on the ADC vs INEC war over “status quo ante bellum.”

Jonathan Swift saw this coming 300 years ago. So he wrote that lawyers take special care to multiply their jargon and, through that, “they have wholly confounded the very essence of truth and falsehood, of right and wrong, so that it will take thirty years to decide whether the field left me by my ancestors for six generations belongs to me or to a stranger three hundred miles off” (p. 233).

To think that all lawyers read Literature in secondary school and were required to pass it with credit at O’Level. If this book escaped their sword when they were in school, why have they not thought of doing something about it since they left school and are now big and powerful?

It is also Swift’s idea that humanity is plagued by a disease: “the nobles seek power, the people seek liberty, the kings seek absolute rule—and civil wars result.” A frightening diagnosis that sounds too close to home.

So, if the ruling party, its president, his INEC, and the courts want to continue enjoying the ransoms they exact from Nigerians, the time to ban that writer, his book and similar ones is now. The government can start the process today; the courts will complete the ban with a midnight judgment and a closed-door ratification. Today.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

By Jeff Godwin Doki Ph.D

‘Haipang is not Jos’, ‘We want to see you in Angwan Rukuba’, ‘That’s not the way to show empathy in Africa’, Visit us Mr. President’, ‘Come to Us’. Chants like that ,and many more, filled the air at Angwan- Rukuba on Thursday April 2, 2026 where thousands of Nigerian citizens gathered , eagerly waiting for the arrival of their President. It was a motley crowd but largely dominated by mourners, those who had lost their loved ones in the recent massacre of March 29, 2026. Emotionally devastated, the mourners had hoped that the presence of the President would give them emotional succour. For the poor mourners, it would, at least, have been a huge comfort to have the No.1 citizen of the country coming to console them. But that did not happen.

Africa like any normal society has its own body of customs, traditions and practices that govern individual relationships to the family, the clan and tribe as well as morality, law, worship, politics, social status, economics, etiquette, war and peace. Prominent among this is empathy usually shown through condolence visits to the bereaved. Our rulers are all Africans and they know this for a fact. In Africa, you don’t mourn alone. Sympathizers pay personal visits to console and empathize with the mourners. So, for Mr. President to visit Plateau state with the desire to console residents of Angwan-Rukuba and remain at Haipang Airport is not only insultingly disingenuous, it is also a complete contravention of African ethos and beliefs. Or, has our President forgotten African norms and values because of his exalted office?
One of the most virulent ailments that destroys rulers in Distance. Our rulers do not know ‘We the People’ because of distance. Distance is a very destructive disease. It is a wedge between the ruler and the ruled by the juggernaut of power. There is always a wide distance between ‘We the People’ and our rulers. On the eve of elections, our rulers are very willing to risk their lives even in the dead of night to meet with us, to hold meetings and political rallies with us. On the eve of elections, our rulers come to woo us. They usually put sugar and honey in their tongues. They give us all manner of promises. Vote for us: ‘we shall build schools and hospitals’, ‘we shall bring water to every backyard’, we shall construct roads to every village’, ‘we shall make poverty a thing of the past’, ‘we shall chase all terrorists out of Nigeria’. Sometimes they even promise to build a bridge even where there is no river. But once they assume office distance comes in.

The man of power forgets about ‘We the People’ whose votes legitimize his power. The man of power becomes too honorable to visit us. Even the mouth becomes too honorable to greet. The very same pathways the man of power had driven on when he was seeking our votes are no longer motorable. The local Airports also cannot accommodate his big jet again. The man of power will always have a reason to avoid a face-to-face encounter with us. He knows we have been short-changed and he is afraid.
Another way of putting this is to say that distance makes the rulers forget easily how they crawled to the top. No where is the distance between the ruler and the ruled illustrated with more clarity than in the analogy I once read from the Nigerian Poet, Niyi Osundare. It goes like this:

         There was a day an emperor saw a milling crowd surging
        towards his palace and instantly called for his robes in a euphoric
        bid to join what he saw as a great rejoicing. He had almost reached
        the door when his wife pulled him by the collar and asked him to
        take another look. He did. Not until then did he see the dagger in each
         eye, and the thunderbolt in each voice. The emperor had seen a mob 
         and fancied a rally; he had mistaken a vengeful riot for a
        thanksgiving carnival.

There is no doubt that the people of Angwan-Rukuba are feeling neglected, swindled, abused and angry. But is that the reason the President is afraid of visiting them? Has the President also seen the dagger in the eyes of the people and the thunderbolt in their voices? Or, perhaps, distance has made Oga’s feet to Presidential to step on Angwan-Rukuba soil? It seems clear to me that our rulers do not know ‘We the People’. Consider this: when the President was on a visit to London some weeks ago suicide bombers killed 23 people in Maiduguri. The President only sent a condolence message. In February this year, there was an attack in Woro village in Kwara state, the President did not visit the site. In June 2025, there was an attack on Yelewata in Benue State where close to 200 people were killed. The President did not visit the site citing bad roads as the reason. In the case of Plateau state, the reasons trumped for the President’s inability to visit Angwan-Rukuba are so insulting to the intelligence that you wonder if the President does not have a Media team to help him with the appropriate words or excuses. The Yakubu Gowon Airport at Haipang does not have the facilities for night flight. Ridiculous! Is it not the duty of any responsible Government to repair all the Airports in the country and construct the road to Yelewata and any other village for that matter? But this is just another good example of distance: the man of power has all but forgotten his campaign promises.

Our rulers strut across the country as if ‘We the People’ are the conquered subjects. According to my information, Plateau State Governor had earlier paid a condolence visit to the residents of Angwa-Rukuba. Good. But he did so with a battalion of security operatives that could have intimidated Iran into submission to the US in the on-going conflict in the Middle-East. Residents of Angwan-Rukuba and Nigerians would be less than human not to feel abused and deceived. Where were all the soldiers and police men when terrorists attacked Angwan-Rukuba? Why should one man, with two eyes and one mouth just like any other human being, have a thousand soldiers on his entourage when there is no single policeman in the remote villages of Riyom and Bokkos? Or, if indeed you are a sincere and popular ruler, do you really need any Police man behind you?

We are in a country where rulers are afflicted with indescribable blindness. And that blindness is the refusal to see or analyze and evaluate the enormity of problems currently confronting us, especially the poor.
Our rulers rule as if the people do not matter. Once they barricade themselves in the verandah of power they forget about the people. More than that, our rulers do not know the people and they do not know them because they are far, far away from us.

But mark this: we the people are greater than the ruler. And this is true because terrorists may assault us, they may kill and maim us today but they cannot annihilate us. We may lose our loved ones to terror-related violence today because of neglect and distance. The ruler, as usual, shall have his way as an eternal victor but, but, ‘We the people’, shall always outlast the palace. Nothing lasts forever.

Jeff Godwin Doki, a creative writer, is a Professor of Comparative Literature

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

By Max Amuchie | THE SUNDAY STEW

There is a kind of fear that does not announce itself with gunfire. It does not arrive on motorcycles or through midnight phone calls demanding ransom. It settles quietly, reshaping how people think, what they believe, and even what they dare to hope for. This is the fear that outlives the bullet.
In April 2014, the world woke up to a phrase that would become both a rallying cry and a haunting reminder of Nigeria’s vulnerability: Bring Back Our Girls. In the quiet town of Borno State, over 270 schoolgirls were taken from their dormitories in the dead of night by fighters loyal to Boko Haram.

But the abduction was never just about the girls. It was about what they represented.
Books. Classrooms. The idea that a young girl in Northern Nigeria could sit behind a desk, learn, and imagine a future beyond the boundaries imposed by fear or tradition. In the logic of terror, that idea itself was a threat.

Years later, in February 2018, history echoed in Dapchi, where more than 100 schoolgirls were again abducted. Most were eventually returned. One was not.
Leah Sharibu remained in captivity—her continued detention reportedly tied not to ransom, but to refusal. Refusal to renounce her faith. Refusal to submit.
In that moment, the nature of the conflict became unmistakably clear. This was no longer about money. It was about belief.

From Violence to Ideology

In the third edition of THE SUNDAY STEW, we launched The Insecurity Triad, beginning with kidnapping —the marketplace where human lives are traded. In the second, we confronted banditry—the siege on Nigeria’s land and food systems.
But beneath both lies a deeper, more enduring force. One that does not merely extract wealth or occupy territory, but seeks to capture the mind itself.
This is terrorism—not just as violence, but as ideology. Not just as conflict, but as a competing vision of order.
Across parts of Northern Nigeria, the authority of the state is no longer the only voice. In its place, groups like Islamic State West Africa Province and Boko Haram have attempted to construct an alternative reality—one governed not by constitutional law, but by rigid interpretations of belief, enforced through fear.

Unlike banditry, which is driven largely by profit, terrorism is anchored in ideology. Its objective is not simply to coerce—but to convert, to dominate not just territory, but thought.
Where the bandit demands payment, the terrorist demands submission. Where the kidnapper negotiates, the extremist dictates.
This distinction explains why terrorism is often more enduring—and more difficult to dismantle. You can disrupt a supply chain. You can block financial flows. But dismantling an idea—especially one rooted in identity—is infinitely more complex.

By the Numbers: The Expanding Terror Footprint

The scale of terrorism in Nigeria is no longer anecdotal—it is measurable.
Nigeria is now ranked among the four most terrorism-affected countries globally, reflecting a sharp deterioration in its security environment.
In 2025 alone:
•Over 170 terrorist incidents were recorded;
•Fatalities climbed to approximately 750 deaths;
•Nearly 80% of these deaths were linked to Boko Haram and ISWAP.
Even more revealing is the global contrast. While terrorism-related deaths declined worldwide, Nigeria recorded one of the sharpest increases, signaling a crisis that is not just persistent—but intensifying.

Geographically, the crisis remains concentrated—but not contained.
Borno State alone accounts for the majority of attacks and fatalities, yet the pattern is shifting.
The trend is clear: fewer but deadlier attacks, and a widening operational footprint.

The War Against Education

One of the clearest expressions of this ideological war is the sustained attack on education.
The very name Boko Haram loosely translates to “Western education is forbidden.” But beyond semantics, the message is unmistakable: knowledge itself is seen as subversive.

Schools are not just buildings; they are symbols. They represent mobility, empowerment, and the possibility of a future that exists outside extremist control.
To attack a school is to attack the future.
From Chibok to Dapchi, and in numerous smaller incidents across the North-East, the targeting of students has been both strategic and symbolic. It sends a message to communities: education carries a cost—and that cost may be too high to bear.

Parallel Sovereignty

Terrorism thrives where the state recedes.
In many affected regions, extremist groups have moved beyond hit-and-run attacks to establish systems of governance:
They collect levies;
They enforce rules;
They adjudicate disputes,
In doing so, they create what can only be described as parallel sovereignty—a competing structure of authority that challenges the legitimacy of the Nigerian state.
With millions displaced across the North-East, terrorism has already begun reshaping not just territory, but population patterns and governance realities.

The New Frontier: From the North-East to Kwara State

For years, the epicentre of terrorism has been the North-East. But the geography of terror is no longer static. It is expanding.
Increasingly, attention is turning to Kwara State—once considered relatively stable—as a potential new frontier.
Bordering pressure zones and sitting along critical transit corridors, Kwara offers the kind of terrain where non-state actors can establish footholds and expand influence.
Recent intelligence patterns suggest growing movement across the North-Central corridor, linking parts of Niger State, Kogi State, and Kwara.
What begins as sporadic incursions can evolve into:
Embedded cells;
Supply networks;
Ideological penetration.
This is how insurgencies spread—not always through conquest, but through incremental penetration.
The danger is not just isolated attacks, but normalisation.
If the North-East was the birthplace of insurgency, then Kwara represents its next testing ground.
Terrorism in Nigeria is no longer confined to a region—it is becoming a pattern.

Mazrui and the Fracture of Identity

To understand the depth of this conflict, we return to Ali Mazrui. In The Africans: A Triple Heritage, Mazrui described African identity as a synthesis of three forces: Indigenous, Islamic, and Western.
His thesis was one of harmony.
What we are witnessing now is rupture.
Terrorism represents an attempt to violently reorder this balance—rejecting pluralism and imposing a singular worldview.
Where Mazrui saw convergence, the extremist sees contradiction.
Where he envisioned coexistence, the terrorist enforces exclusion.
This is not merely a security crisis. It is a civilisational contest.

The Psychology of Fear

Terrorism operates not only through violence, but through psychological dominance.
The goal is not just to kill—but to condition.
Not just to destroy—but to reshape behaviour.
Communities begin to self-censor.
Parents withdraw children from school.
Expression becomes cautious.
Over time, fear becomes internalised.
This is the true victory of terror: when society begins to regulate itself according to fear.

The Sovereignty Question

At its core, terrorism poses a fundamental question:
Who governs?
Is it the constitution?
Is it elected authority?
Or is it the actor that can most effectively project fear?
A nation does not lose sovereignty only when borders are breached. It loses it when its authority is contested from within.

Breaking the Cycle

Confronting terrorism requires more than military force. It demands a multidimensional response:
•Security Presence: Intelligence-driven, sustained operations;
•Education Protection: Safeguarding schools as national assets;
•Counter-Ideology: Promoting pluralism and coexistence;
•Community Trust: Rebuilding confidence between citizens and the state.
This is not simply a war of weapons. It is a war of ideas, legitimacy, and identity.

Closing Argument: The Final Pillar

If kidnapping commodifies life, and banditry captures the land, terrorism seeks to colonise the mind.
And a nation that loses control of its mind risks losing everything else.
The Insecurity Triad is not just a framework—it is a warning. Each pillar reinforces the other—financially, territorially, and ideologically.
But the urgency has deepened.
What was once a regional crisis is now a national drift. From the classrooms of the North-East to the forests of the North-Central, the geography of terror is widening.
The frontlines are no longer fixed.
The war for Nigeria’s soul is no longer distant. It is moving—quietly, steadily—into new spaces, new communities, and new consciousness.
The question is no longer whether the threat exists.
The question is no longer where it exists.
The question now is whether we have the clarity—and the will—to stop its spread.

As The Insecurity Triad concludes with this edition, new vistas begin to emerge. Chief among them is the need to interrogate the concepts developed in this series within the context of Nigeria’s evolving insecurity—now a single, interlocking system of money, land, and mind, eroding sovereignty, fracturing identity, and placing the nation under siege.

Next week, we will confront it fully.
Don’t miss it.

Happy Easter

Trust is Sacred. Stay Seasoned.

Dr. Max Amuchie is the Founder and CEO of SUNDIATA POST and the developer of The Insecurity Triad analytical framework. He writes THE SUNDAY STEW, a weekly syndicated column on faith, character, and the forces that shape society, with a focus on Nigeria and Africa in a global context.

X – @MaxAmuchie | Email: [email protected] | Tel: +234(0)8053069436.

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.

By Chidi Anselm Odinkalu

In Nigeria, every act of political grubbiness sooner or later ends up before the courts. The kinds of things that come out of the courts in these disputes defy understanding. Colonial rule in Nigeria established a durable method of cleaning up dirty politics. It always found a judge or judicial order to give it the cover of law.

Since the onset of the administration of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in May 2023, the playbook has become a familiar script, turning Nigerian judges into what has been described as “authors of confusion”. It usually begins with an orchestrated internal leadership dispute in an opposition political party. Then “one faction goes to court, the court issues a vague interim order dressed in Latin, total confusion erupts, INEC is paralysed, and the opposition party is crippled.” It’s the ruse of law.

As the country hurtles supposedly towards national elections in 2027, the judges have become very busy indeed. The latest object of their attentions is the African Democratic Congress, (ADC).

It all began with what looked like a routine playbook of diabolical political sorcery. By the middle of 2025, the former ruling party and then leading opposition platform, the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP) had all but been hollowed out. The cause or actors in that will be the subject of separate treatment. Leading members of the party decided that it was no longer a viable vehicle for their ambitions. In a country where independent candidacy is precluded, control of a party is the lifeblood of political ambition.

Those of them who desired to quit the PDP had two options. One was to register a new party. For this, they needed the sanction of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) but they knew that an INEC under the control of the ruling party was not going to register a new party capable to making the 2027 elections interesting. So, they settled for the second option of entryism into an existing party. For this project, it appears, they did a deal with the then existing leadership of the ADC.

On 2 July 2025, Ralph Nwosu, the founder and chairman of the ADC announced the resignation of the national executive of the party that he led and threw his support behind a new interim national leadership under former Senate President, David Mark and former Interior Minister, Rauf Aregbesola.

Four weeks later, Nafiu Bala Gombe, who ran on the platform of the party in 2023 as governorship candidate in the Gombe State, proclaimed himself new interim chairman of the ADC. Nafiu Bala claimed that he took that step in his capacity as the Deputy National Chairman under Ralph Nwosu. In a release around 1 August 2025, he dismissed as “entirely false, deceptive, malicious, and fake” a letter dated 18 July 2025, in which he is said to have resigned from the position of deputy national chairman of the party.

One month later, on 2 September 2025, Nafiu Bala initiated a court action at the Federal High Court in Abuja seeking to restrain INEC from recognizing the new leadership of David Mark and Rauf Aregbesola. The case was assigned to Emeka Nwite, a judge. Bala Nafiu followed up his case by applying to the judge to issue an order granting him the orders he sought without hearing the other parties sued. Those were Rauf Aregbesola, INEC, the ADC and Ralph Nwosu.

Very importantly, David Mark was not party to that court case and no one applied to join him. When the application came up for hearing around 4 September, the judge declined Bala Nafiu’s importuning and, instead, asked him to put all the defendants on notice to enable the court make an informed determination of the issues after granting all involved a hearing.

Thereafter, the wheels appeared to come off the facts.

Around 9 September 2025, INEC formally recognised David Mark and Rauf Aregbesola as the new leaders of the party. This is important because it gave them access to the INEC’s portal for the purpose of certifying candidates on the platform of the party in elections.

Thereafter, David Mark, who was not a party to the case at the High Court, lodged an appeal at the Court of Appeal in which he questioned the power of the court to issue the order inviting the parties to respond to Bala Nafiu’s case. My friends who think they know Nigerian law advise – and I verily believe them – that this had them all scratching their heads.

Now, because he was not party to the original case at the High Court, David Mark could not appeal against the decision except with permission of the court. He did not seek nor did he receive one. Having not done so, the conditions for a competent appeal did not exist and the Court of Appeal had no business hearing the appeal.

The only thing more inexplicable than the appeal itself is that it took the Court of Appeal over five months and nearly 60 pages to come to a decision on this case.

Three Justices of the Court of Appeal heard the case. On 12 March, they issued their decision. In a 40-page judgment, Uchechukwu Onyemenam, the senior Justice of Appeal, “dismissed” the appeal with costs assessed at two million Naira.

Thereafter, the judge took initiative to “protect the integrity of the proceedings” before Emeka Nwite at the Federal High Court and ordered the parties to “maintain the status quo ante-bellum” and “refrain taking any step or doing any act capable of foisting a fait accompli on the court or otherwise rendering nugatory the proceedings before the trial court.”

In his own judgment, Okon Abang, the junior Justice of Appeal on the panel whose text ran into 15 pages, initially said he concurred. In fact, he did not. He ruled that having not secured the permission required for him to appeal, David Mark’s appeal was incompetent. Indeed, Okon Abang described the case “a nullity”. That means there was in fact no appeal. It is difficult, therefore, to understand how he could have “dismissed” an appeal that did not as a matter of law exist.

The other Justice of Appeal on the panel was Mohammed Mustapha. To him belonged the privilege of the tie-breaker. But if he issued any judgment, it is yet to be found.

The parties to whom the Court of Appeal directed the order to respect the status quo ante-bellum included INEC. The Commission has a rich supply of senior lawyers on its payroll, both on staff and as external solicitors. Indeed, its chairman, Joash Amupitan, is both Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN) and professor of law.

The Commission took all of three weeks to parse this judgment and, at the end of that, sent a journalist, Mohammed Haruna, to announce that out of respect for the order of the Court of Appeal, it had decided to withdraw its recognition of David Mark and Rauf Aregbesola as Chairman and Secretary of the ADC.

The irony was lost on INEC and its leadership that it chose to issue this position on All Fools Day. Party primaries are to begin in three weeks. The parties must submit their membership register to INEC 21 days before their primaries. A party mired in manufactured court disputes cannot do either. That would disqualify it as a platform for the 2027 elections.

Chairman Amupitan knows what he is doing.

To drive that point home, he chose to shred the garb of a neutral umpire or the claim of respecting an order of the Court of Appeal that existed entirely in his imagination, threatening political Armageddon on the ADC if they proceed with a party congress. As if to confirm who the whisperer is, presidential spokesperson, Bayo Onanuga advised the ADC to “please listen to the INEC chairman. He is a professor of law.” Beneath the ruse of law, a malevolent design lurks in plain sight.

A lawyer and a teacher, Odinkalu can be reached at [email protected] 

The views expressed by contributors are strictly personal and not of Law & Society Magazine.