A Federal High Court in Abuja on Thursday nullified the leadership of the African Democratic Congress led by former Senate President David Mark.
Justice Peter Lifu declared the Mark led caretaker committee illegal and voided all its decisions. The ruling also cancelled the nomination of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar as the party presidential candidate for the 2027 elections. It further nullified the position of Rauf Aregbesola as national secretary and cancelled nominations of other candidates put forward under the disputed leadership.
The judgment came in a suit filed by Nafiu Bala Gombe, a former national deputy chairman of the party for the North East. Gombe argued that he should have assumed leadership after the resignation of former national chairman Ralph Nwosu and that the Mark group took control in violation of the party constitution and the Electoral Act.
The court agreed and ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission not to recognise actions taken at a national executive committee meeting held on July 27 2025. The African Democratic Congress has said it will appeal the decision.
In response on X, legal scholar and former chairman of the National Human Rights Commission Chidi Anselm Odinkalu said there is a superior decadence that enables the decadence of Peter Lifu. It is called John Tsoho. He is the Chief Judge of the Federal High Court.
He knows what he is doing. These men are now so compromised they know that they will stand no chance under a different dispensation. So they no longer need to be bribed. Their corrupt judgments have become desperate acts of personal and political survival. They are no longer judges. They are now members of an organised political crime gang.
Odinkalu said the suggestion of mischief or cheekiness implicit in the use of judicial rascal to describe Peter Lifu misunderstands and misrepresents Lifusprudence. Lifusprudence is the dark art of taking the prudence out of the science of law.
It is underpinned by casual wilfulness under colour of judicial pronouncement. That is what makes it so dangerous because although it reads as law Lifusprudence is actually network crime. The surprise is that it has acquired a distinct identity in a system that should exist to suppress it. Now as the country gets ready for elections it is the season for Lifusprudence to thrive and revel in the joint enterprise between politicians and Peter their Judicial Hitman.
Odinkalu said it is a disgrace that Peter Lifu continues to parade himself as a judge in Nigeria when he lives and works in the pocket of a known politician. It is equally a disgrace that his cell mate inside that pocket is John Tsoho. There is no bleach for the blot they inflict on the Nigerian judiciary. On the same day he noted that Peter has done another Lifu from the Federal High Court and pointed to excerpts from a lecture three weeks earlier by former Supreme Court Justice Amina Augie to the Nigerian Law School Class of 1986 as worth another look.
