Two days after a court in Lokoja pulled the legal ground from under the Nigeria Democratic Congress, the party’s top people sat in closed rooms in Abuja. Peter Obi, its presidential candidate, and Seriake Dickson, its national leader, joined the national chairman, the national secretary and other executives on Saturday. They met again on Sunday. The goal was an appeal, due at the Court of Appeal on Monday.
A senior party official, who spoke to The Punch on condition of anonymity, described the pace. “Even as we speak, there is another emergency meeting ongoing ahead of tomorrow’s appeal,” he said. The party had not settled who would lead its lawyers. He could say only that National Legal Adviser Reuben Egwuaba would play a key role.
National Secretary Ikenna Enekweizu confirmed that the appeal would be filed Monday but would not name the lead counsel. “By the time we file our processes on Monday, you will know those who are in the team and who the leader is,” he said.
What the Lokoja court decided
The Federal High Court in Lokoja, Kogi State, had set aside its own earlier judgment, the one that directed the Independent National Electoral Commission to register the NDC. It also ordered a fresh hearing of the main suit. The court reasoned that the earlier judgment was given without hearing every party affected, in particular the Peace Movement Party, which claimed to own the disputed party logo.
The effect was to put everyone back where they stood before the December 10, 2025 judgment that recognised the NDC. INEC said it would wait for the Certified True Copy of the ruling before acting. The NDC maintained that the decision had neither deregistered it nor barred it from the 2027 general election.
Party figures push back
Enekweizu called the ruling unprecedented. “That ruling has no legal basis. There is no precedent in law that can justify it,” he said, and he promised that all candidates, from Obi down to House of Assembly level, would be on the ballot.
Dickson went on Channels Television’s Politics Today on Sunday to deal with reports that some candidates might walk away. “The NDC has not been deregistered and won’t be deregistered,” he said. He called the situation a “kangaroo” exercise meant to unsettle members. Asked whether the party would report Justice Dashen to the National Judicial Council, he said no. “The judge has erred. We are not happy about it,” he said, adding that the appellate courts were the proper route.
Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, the former Kano State governor, visited Dickson at his Abuja home on Sunday and wrote about it on Facebook. “No temporary setback can weaken the spirit of a movement built on hope, justice, equity and the collective aspirations of the Nigerian people,” he said. National Chairman Moses Cleopas told reporters, “There is no shaking because we are stronger.”
Supporters lined up behind the appeal. John Ughulu, national coordinator of the Obi-Kwankwaso Movement, said the group had seen the judgment coming. The Obidient Movement said it had no doubt that Obi and Kwankwaso would be on the ballot. A second party official said the NDC planned a run of press conferences and meetings with civil society groups.
How it turned out
The Court of Appeal in Abuja later reversed the Lokoja ruling in a 2-to-1 split decision. Trouble followed anyway. The Obi-Kwankwaso Movement announced a 59-member Presidential Campaign Council, and Cleopas rejected it, warning that no candidate or support group could set up campaign structures in the party’s name. The movement said its council stood. Dickson called the move “nonsensical.”
A separate row broke out in the North-east after the party named former Secretary to the Government of the Federation Babachir Lawal as its campaign coordinator there. Six NDC governorship candidates in the zone objected that stakeholders had not been consulted, and Lawal answered them on Facebook in language their camp called abusive.
Sources
- Obi, Kwankwaso lead NDC’s battle against deregistration
- Nigeria: As NDC, O-K Movement's Feud Deepens
