Political Party De-registration And Judicial Contradictions

The recent judicial pronouncement ordering the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to deregister the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and four other political parties has once again thrust Nigeria’s fragile democratic architecture into a complex triangle of law, politics and institutional authority. Delivered by the Federal High Court in Abuja, the judgment, which also affected the Action Peoples Party (APP), Action Alliance (AA), Accord Party (AP), and Zenith Labour Party (ZLP), was anchored on alleged failure to meet constitutional electoral thresholds required for continued party registration.
However, the legal and political landscape shifted almost immediately when th...