The ADC shot itself: No court can save a party that despised the court — by Okoi Obono-Obla

There is a deliberate attempt by the African Democratic Congress to mislead Nigerians about the judgment of the Federal High Court, Abuja, delivered on November 5, 2026 by Justice Peter O. Lifu.

The party’s lawyer, Kalu Kalu, appeared on Channels Television to insist that the judgment did not nullify the candidacy of former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar for the January 16, 2027 presidential election. He said there is no portion of the judgment that voids Atiku’s candidacy.

Technically, he is right on a very narrow point. Justice Lifu did not make an order that expressly says, “ Atiku Abubakar’s nomination is hereby nullified.”

But that is a lawyer’s trick. It is not the law. And it is certainly not the whole judgment.

What Justice Lifu did was far more fundamental. He nullified the emergence of Senator David Mark as National Chairman and Rauf Aregbesola as National Secretary. He declared that all actions, decisions and steps taken by Mark, Aregbesola and other members of the National Working Committee from July 29, 2025 were null and void. He restrained the Independent National Electoral Commission from recognising them or acting on the decisions of the 99th National Executive Committee meeting of July 27, 2025.

If that judgment stands, Atiku’s candidacy cannot stand with it. It is a simple matter of logic and law.

A candidacy does not fall from heaven. It is a product of a process. Let us trace that process, as the ADC itself carried it out.

First, the Mark-led group sold nomination forms to aspirants who wanted to participate in the party’s primaries.

Second, it screened those aspirants through committees it appointed.

Third, it conducted primaries across the country.

Fourth, it published results and announced winners, including Atiku Abubakar as its presidential candidate.

Fifth, it collected nomination forms from INEC, filled them, and uploaded the names and personal particulars of those candidates onto INEC’s server.

Every single one of those steps was an “action, decision and step” of the Mark-led National Working Committee. Every single one of them is caught by Justice Lifu’s order declaring such actions null and void.

You cannot sever the fruit from the tree that produced it. If the tree was void ab initio — if it never legally existed — the fruit is void. If the leadership that conducted the primary had no authority, the primary had no authority. If the primary had no authority, there is no valid winner. If there is no valid winner, there is nothing for INEC to accept.

Kalu wants Nigerians to believe that a candidacy can survive the death of the process that created it. That is legally impossible unless an appellate court, for reasons of equity and to avoid electoral chaos, expressly saves it. No such order has been made.

But there is a second, even more damning point against the ADC. The party was not ignorant. It was not taken by surprise.

At all material times, the ADC knew that the suit by Nafiu Bala Gombe was pending before the Federal High Court. Gombe had challenged the very foundation of the Mark leadership — that the vacancies created by the resignation of Ralph Nwosu and other executives were not filled through a democratic process in accordance with the party’s constitution and Section 82(3) of the Electoral Act, 2022.

Rather than respect the court and wait for the outcome, the ADC arrogantly proceeded. It sold forms. It screened. It conducted primaries. It submitted names. It did all this with its eyes wide open, in the face of a pending suit challenging its authority to do any of it.

This is the classic case of a party acting at its own peril.

Our courts have warned repeatedly, from Ojukwu v Governor of Lagos State to Vaswani v Savalakh, that no party should resort to self-help or take steps that will render a pending judgment nugatory. Once you know a matter is before the court, you must not present the court with a fait accompli.

The ADC did exactly the opposite. It gambled that Justice Lifu would uphold the Mark leadership, as Justice Musa Liman had done on July 2, 2026. It gambled that by completing the primaries, it would force the court and INEC to accept the reality on the ground.

The gamble failed.

Now the party turns around to complain that thousands of candidates will be affected. But who affected them? Not Justice Lifu. Not INEC. Not Gombe. The ADC itself affected them by proceeding with impunity while its leadership was under challenge.

It is likened to a man who puts his hand into a pot of boiling water, knowing fully well that it will burn him, and then blames the water for the injury. The ADC knew the consequences. It put its hand in anyway.

Volenti non fit injuria — to him who consents, no injury is done.

The ADC consented to the risk. It voluntarily assumed a known danger. It cannot now claim to be injured by the very risk it willingly embraced. When a party voluntarily puts itself in harm’s way, it cannot complain of the injury that follows.

A stay of execution is a discretionary, equitable remedy. Equity does not aid a party that has deliberately despised the court. The ADC cannot now ask the Court of Appeal to save it from the consequences of its own arrogance, on the ground that it has already spent money and its candidates have already campaigned. That money was spent, and that campaign was done, with full knowledge of the risk.

I do not say the Court of Appeal will not, in the interest of the 2027 elections and to avoid chaos, find a way to preserve the primaries. Nigerian courts have sometimes done so. But if it does, it will be doing so despite the ADC, not because the ADC was right.

Let us be clear: The ADC shot itself. It knew the pot was boiling. It put its hand in. It cannot now claim it did not know it would be burnt.