Scores of demonstrators marched from the National Assembly to the Federal High Court in Abuja on Monday and staged a protest against what they called interference in the judiciary and the Independent National Electoral Commission. Security operatives, including officers of the Department of State Services, barricaded the entrance to the court complex and stopped the group from entering.
The protesters were under the aegis of Concerned Northern Nigeria Stakeholders and carried placards reading: No Opposition, No Election, Tinubu, Let Our Democracy Breathe and AGF Must Be Neutral. Banki Sharrif said the group was alarmed by threats to judicial independence and democratic institutions, and urged President Bola Tinubu to stop all forms of interference, overt or covert, with the judiciary. He said the Office of the Attorney General of the Federation and Minister of Justice must remain firmly anchored in neutrality and the rule of law.
The protest landed on the same day the pressure around a court case over party deregistration was still hanging over Abuja. The suit, filed on April 23 by the National Forum of Former Legislators and marked FHC/ABJ/CS/2637/2026, seeks to compel INEC to deregister the African Democratic Congress, Action Alliance, Action Peoples Party, Accord and Zenith Labour Party. The plaintiffs say the five political parties failed to meet the constitutional threshold under section 225A of the 1999 Constitution.
Accord rejected that premise. Joseph Omorogbe said the party cannot be de-registered because it meets the constitutional requirements for registration, adding that there is no basis whatsoever to contemplate its de-registration. The party said it has one governor, one senator, six members of the House of Representatives, 24 state House of Assembly members and one councillor, and pointed to election victories it says show continued support. It said it won the Ideato South State House of Assembly election in Imo State on 15 April 2023, that a certificate of return was issued to Hon. Vitalis Azodo and signed by INEC Chairman Professor Mahmood Yakubu on 19 April 2023, and that the result was later nullified by an election tribunal. Accord also said Hon. Zahairu Usman and Hon. Isa Alhaji won councillorship elections in Jigawa State on 5 October 2024, with certificates of return issued by JSIEC on 6 October 2024.
The tension is that a public protest over democracy met a locked court gate while the dispute behind it moves through the legal system. No date has been fixed for the hearing, so the next decision now belongs to the court and to INEC, which will have to answer whether the parties named in the suit still meet the law's test for survival.
