Last week, on June 26, Justice Isah Dashen of the Federal High Court, Lokoja, caused a huge judicio-political stir when he set aside his December 10, 2025, judgement ordering the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to register the Nigeria Democratic Congress, NDC, as a political party. The ruling effectively deregisters the party. Having thoroughly read the Certified True Copy, CTC, of the judgement, I believe the judge’s action amounted to judicial recklessness and vandalism, which risks truncating Nigeria’s fragile democracy.
If that sounds hyperbolic, then consider the wider implication of Justice Dashen’s ruling. The judge ordered that NDC’s substantive suit, which gave rise to the December 2025 ruling in its favour, “shall revert to the stage it occupied immediately before the delivery of the judgement set aside herein.” In other words, based on the extant ruling, there’s currently no court order on INEC to recognise NDC as a political party, and INEC can revert to its original position before December 10, 2025, when it refused to do so.
Recently, I wrote in this column that NDC was on shaky ground, pointing out that INEC had the words “By Court Order” after the party’s name on its website, “suggesting that the party only exists by a court order and might cease to exist by another court order, something akin to a sword of Damocles!” Surely, with Justice Dashen’s recent ruling, that sword has fallen on NDC and could kill it unless the ruling is quashed on appeal.
That’s why the perverse ruling amounts to recklessness and judicial vandalism. In law, recklessness occurs when someone acts deliberately while consciously disregarding a known risk. According to an English judge, judges should do a consequential analysis of their proposed rulings and consider their likely impacts. However, such consequential analysis is often lacking when judges indulge in judicial activism or vandalism, defined by the famous Lord Bingham as when a judge, better called a political judge, steps away from reasonable interpretation of the law or reasonable exercise of judicial discretion and oversteps into the realm of politics, using the court to pursue political goals.
Think about it. Six months after delivering a judgement, Justice Dashen set it aside at a time when the beneficiary of that judgement, based on a legitimate reliance on it, could suffer serious prejudice and detriment. What law or public policy can justify that kind of judicial interpretation? Legal judgement is expected to accord with common sense, with interpretations that are deemed reasonable and logical. Unfortunately, Justice Dashen’s ruling voiding his December 2025 judgement defies logic and reason.
All lawyers and judges recognise the judicial principle that once a judge delivers a final judgement, they become functus officio on the matter, “having fulfilled the function,” and thus cannot reopen the case to reconsider their decision, except where the judgement was a nullity ab initio or was obtained by fraud or deceit. In his ruling setting aside his December 2025 judgement, Justice Dashen acknowledged the functus officio principle and said he was not reconsidering the merits of the original judgement. However, he said he was setting it aside based on the principle of fair hearing because a party, Peace Movement Party, PMP, which supposedly had interests in the original suit filed by NDC, was not joined in that suit and, therefore, was not “afforded an opportunity of being heard.” That, the judge ruled, warranted setting aside the original ruling!
But the facts and evidence in the case, as set out in the CTC, point to a different conclusion. According to the facts, NDC applied to INEC in 2017 to be registered as a political party. INEC refused, following which NDC filed a suit challenging its decision. In court, INEC said it refused to register NDC because its logo, the two-finger victory symbol, looked like that of another political association, PMP, which applied for registration in 2015, two years before NDC submitted its own application and logo. After hearing both INEC and NDC, the only two parties in the suit, the judge ruled in favour of NDC and ordered INEC to register it as a political party. INEC did not appeal the ruling. But six months later, Justice Dashen decided to set the ruling aside because PMP was not joined in the suit.
It beggars belief! There’s no evidence from the facts that PMP showed any significant interest in the matter. First, unlike NDC, PMP did not challenge INEC’s refusal to register it as a political party. Second, PMP did not seek to be joined in NDC’s substantive suit, even though it could not credibly feign ignorance of the suit. It defies logic and reason that Justice Dashen felt that PMP had to be mollycoddled and pampered, instead of being deservedly reprimanded for failing to proactively pursue a matter in which it supposedly had “direct, substantial and legally recognisable interests,” as the judge put it. Given that the disputed logo was INEC’s main defence in the substantive suit, and that Justice Dashen gave a full judgement based on the evidence, how could the judge cite non-disclosure of a “material fact” for setting aside his ruling simply because PMP was not before the court? A commonsense reading of the facts shows that PMP was not, until recently, remotely serious about challenging NDC over the disputed logo.
The strongest proof is that it took PMP several months after Justice Dashen’s ruling on December 10, 2025, before asking the judge to set the judgement aside. In its motion on notice filed on May 5, five months after the December 2025 ruling, PMP sought an order of the court “extending the time within which it may apply to set aside” the earlier judgement. Clearly, in asking the court to extend the time to make its application, PMP recognised that it had not acted timeously. Yet, Justice Dashen granted the extension. Equity, it is said, aids the vigilant. But in Justice Dashen’s court, equity aided the indolent. But why? Well, the judge cited the “constitutional guarantee of fair hearing” and said the breach of fair hearing in the case was “of such nature and gravity” as to justify setting aside his original judgement. But really? What prejudice or detriment has PMP, which did not even challenge INEC’s refusal to register it as a political party, suffered? Can that be compared with NDC’s, which has a prominent presidential candidate and under which thousands of Nigerians are seeking various elective offices?
Let’s face it, PMP was a Trojan horse, aided by the court, to unsettle NDC after Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso joined the party and made it relevant. Had NDC remained a shell political party, hardly anyone would contest its registration or logo. This lends credence to the widespread concern that President Bola Tinubu and his party, APC, want to make it impossible for Obi and probably even Atiku Abubakar to participate in the 2027 poll. Recently, Justice Peter Lifu of the Federal High Court, Abuja, ordered INEC to deregister the African Democratic Congress, ADC, of which Atiku is presidential candidate. Although the Court of Appeal later ordered a stay of execution of the judgment, ADC is not yet safe. Earlier this week, Atiku alleged a “fresh plot to keep ADC off the ballot.”
So, both ADC and NDC, the two main opposition parties, are on the ropes. But can there really be a credible presidential election in 2027 without Atiku, who secured 7mn votes and came second, and without Obi, who scored 6mn votes and came third in the 2023 presidential poll, freely participating in it? There is a huge risk of great political turmoil if they are prevented from actively participating in the poll and are widely believed to be victims of underhand politics and judicial sleight of hand. For the sake of Nigeria’s fragile democracy, judges must not allow themselves to be used as willing tools to wreak political havoc through judicial recklessness and vandalism!
*Dr Fasan is the author of ‘In The National Interest: The Road to Nigeria’s Political, Economic and Social Transformation’, available at RovingHeights bookstores.
