The ADC matter, Atiku’s ambition and conflicting judicial pronouncements — by Temitope Ajayi

The National Judicial Council (NJC) must urgently address the growing concern over judicial discipline and the integrity of the bench. Nothing damages public confidence in the judiciary more than courts of equal jurisdiction issuing contradictory rulings on the same matter. Two High Courts should not be making conflicting pronouncements on the ADC leadership dispute. Once a court has ruled on a matter, the proper recourse is an appeal to a higher court, not a parallel judicial contest.

Predictably, ADC members and sympathisers are already accusing President Bola Tinubu and the APC of masterminding the judgment delivered today by Justice Peter Lifu of the Federal High Court, Abuja. The truth, however, is that the leadership crisis bedevilling the Senator David Mark-led National Working Committee is largely a product of the political miscalculations of those who walked into it.

Neither President Tinubu nor the APC created this problem. The unforced errors and poor political judgment of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and his political associates are at the heart of the present predicament. They chose to acquire a political party without conducting the necessary due diligence. The ADC, as every man and his dog knows, was already embroiled in a leadership dispute before their arrival. That is hardly a mistake for which the ruling party should be held responsible.

President Tinubu is preparing for a decisive electoral contest against Atiku in a January 16, 2027 rematch. The APC is ready for that contest. However, Atiku and his associates must first resolve the political and legal complications arising from their own decisions.

There is also a delicious irony in Atiku’s present predicament. While the former Vice President and his party apparatchiks are crying foul and constructing conspiracy theories around an unfavourable judicial pronouncement, Atiku himself has engaged lawyers in Nigeria and the United States, alongside a public relations firm, in efforts to use legal and public pressure to disqualify President Tinubu from the presidential race.

In other words, Atiku has no difficulty deploying judicial intervention as a political weapon when the objective is to keep his principal opponent off the ballot. However, when judicial pronouncements threaten his own political ambitions, the same process suddenly becomes evidence of conspiracy and persecution.

That is hypocrisy writ large. One cannot demand that the courts intervene decisively when the outcome favours one’s political ambition and question the integrity of the judiciary when it does not. The rule of law cannot be a convenient instrument of political warfare. It must apply equally to everyone, including the former Vice President.

— Ajayi is Senior Special Assistant to President Tinubu on Media and Publicity