Click to read full

Fresh controversy has erupted over the court ruling involving the NDC Party as the party's National Secretary, Ikenna Enekweizu, rejected the decision and insisted that the court had already delivered a well-considered judgment ordering the registration of the NDC. According to him, the NDC started the process of registering a political party in 2017 with an elephant as its logo. Along the line, the party realized another party already had the elephant as its logo, so it applied to INEC to change it and introduced the victory sign in 2024. He said there was no problem until September 2025, when INEC wrote to the NDC saying it could not continue the registration process because, according to INEC, the NDC logo looked like that of the APC. Enekweizu said the NDC disagreed with INEC and even requested to be allowed to change the logo so that the registration process could continue, but INEC refused. The party then took INEC to court. He said at the time the case was filed, the NDC did not know anything about the Peace Movement Party (PMP). According to him, the only reason INEC gave for refusing registration was that the NDC logo looked like that of the APC. He said INEC later introduced the issue of PMP during the court proceedings. However, he argued that PMP was not a registered political party and was not among the 171 political associations seeking registration in Nigeria. According to him, when the judge asked INEC whether PMP was a registered political party, INEC answered "No." When asked whether PMP was among the 171 associations seeking registration, INEC also answered "No." He said the court overruled all of INEC's arguments, including the issue of PMP, and ordered that the NDC be registered. Reacting to the latest ruling, Enekweizu insisted that there are only two legal grounds for setting aside a judgment: where the judgment is a nullity from the beginning or where it was obtained by fraud. He maintained that neither of those conditions applies in the NDC case. He questioned why PMP, which claimed INEC refused to register it in 2015, stayed away for about nine years before coming to challenge the judgment. "Every Nigerian knows there is foul play," he said, insisting that PMP should have applied for leave to appeal as an interested party instead of asking the same court to set aside its own final judgment. He also maintained that once a judge has heard and concluded a case, the judge becomes functus officio and has no power to reopen or rehear the matter. — Ikenna Enekweizu, National Secretary, NDC Party