Abstract

The November 5, 2026 judgment of Justice Peter Lifu of the Federal High Court, Abuja, nullifying the David Mark-led leadership of the African Democratic Congress and invalidating Atiku Abubakar’s presidential nomination, presents one of the most acute doctrinal dilemmas in Nigerian pre-election jurisprudence: the collision of two decisions of coordinate jurisdiction on the same subject matter within a four-month window. This article subjects the judgment to rigorous scrutiny, examining its soundness against established principles governing (i) the justiciability of intra-party leadership disputes, (ii) the doctrine of stare decisis at coordinate levels, (iii) the distinction between party administration and candidate nomination under the Electoral Act 2026, and (iv) the jurisdictional boundaries of the Federal High Court in pre-election matters. It argues that while Justice Lifu’s judgment may be substantively defensible on the merits of the ADC constitution, its procedural posture-delivered in apparent disregard of Justice Musa Liman’s subsisting July 2, 2026 judgment-renders it vulnerable to appellate reversal on grounds of judicial comity and abuse of process. The article concludes that the case exposes a structural deficiency in Nigeria’s electoral dispute resolution architecture that demands urgent legislative attention.

I. Introduction: The Coordinate Jurisdiction Problem

The Nigerian judiciary operates on a hierarchy of courts, but the Federal High Court, with its numerous judges sitting in different divisions, presents a unique structural challenge: judges of equal rank may reach conflicting conclusions on identical facts and law. The ADC litigation exemplifies this pathology in its most consequential form.

On July 2, 2026, Justice Musa Liman of the same Federal High Court delivered judgment in Abejide v. ADC (Suit No. FHC/ABJ/CS/1637/2025), dismissing a challenge to the Mark-led leadership on grounds that the dispute was an internal party affair, non-justiciable, and that the plaintiff lacked locus standi and had failed to exhaust internal remedies . On November 5, 2026, Justice Peter Lifu, sitting in a different division of the same court, reached the diametrically opposite conclusion in Gombe v. ADC (Suit No. FHC/ABJ/CS/1819/2025), holding that the Mark leadership was unconstitutional and void ab initio .

The doctrinal soundness of Justice Lifu’s judgment cannot be assessed in isolation from this prior decision. The ADC’s National Legal Adviser, Senator Oserheimen Osunbor, has argued forcefully that the judgment “went contrary to three existing judgments of courts of coordinate jurisdiction” and that the appropriate remedy for a dissatisfied party is appeal, not the filing of a fresh suit before another judge of equal rank . This raises the central question: was Justice Lifu bound by Justice Liman’s judgment, and if so, does his failure to follow it constitute a fatal procedural infirmity?

II. The Doctrine of Judicial Comity and Coordinate Jurisdiction

A. Stare Decisis and the Vertical Hierarchy

The doctrine of stare decisis in Nigerian law operates primarily along a vertical axis: decisions of superior courts bind inferior courts, and decisions of the Supreme Court bind all. The Court of Appeal binds the Federal High Court; the Federal High Court does not bind itself in the strict sense, though individual judges are expected to accord deference to prior decisions of coordinate courts on identical issues.

The Supreme Court has addressed this principle in various contexts. In Osakue v. Federal College of Education (Technical), Asaba (2010) 10 NWLR (Pt. 1201) 1, the Court emphasized that judicial decisions of courts of coordinate jurisdiction are persuasive rather than binding, but that a judge who departs from a prior decision of a coordinate court on the same facts must provide cogent reasons for doing so. More directly, in Olorunfemi v. Asho (2000) 2 NWLR (Pt. 643) 143, the Court of Appeal held that where two judges of the same court have reached conflicting decisions on the same matter, the later decision does not automatically supersede the earlier one; the conflict must be resolved by an appellate court.

B. The Abejide Decision: Ratio and Implications

Justice Liman’s judgment in Abejide was not a perfunctory dismissal. The court made specific findings on three distinct grounds:

1. Jurisdiction: The dispute concerned the internal affairs of a political party, which is non-justiciable under Nigerian law .
2. Locus Standi: The plaintiff failed to demonstrate that his legal rights were violated by the emergence of the Mark leadership .
3. Exhaustion of Internal Remedies: The plaintiff did not utilize the ADC’s internal dispute resolution mechanisms before resorting to litigation .

Crucially, Justice Liman also resolved the substantive issues in the defendants’ favour, holding that the transfer of leadership from Ralph Nwosu to David Mark did not contravene the ADC Constitution, and that the July 29, 2025 NEC meeting-monitored by INEC-validly produced Mark and Aregbesola as national officers .

The ratio decidendi of Abejide therefore encompasses both procedural and substantive findings. If these findings were correct, Justice Lifu’s subsequent contrary conclusions on the same facts represent a direct challenge to the authority of a coordinate court’s judgment. The ADC’s legal team has characterized the Lifu judgment as “academic” and “overtaken by events,” arguing that it cannot override the subsisting Liman decision .

C. The Abuse of Process Doctrine

The Supreme Court has consistently held that the filing of multiple suits before different judges of coordinate jurisdiction on the same subject matter constitutes an abuse of court process. In Saraki v. Kotoye (1992) 9 NWLR (Pt. 264) 156, the Court held that “the multiplicity of actions on the same subject matter between the same parties, even where there is no ground for demurrer, is an abuse of process.” Similarly, in Arubo v. Aiyeleru (1993) 3 NWLR (Pt. 280) 126, the Court emphasized that litigants cannot be allowed to “shop” for favorable judges by filing successive suits.

However, a critical distinction must be drawn. The Abejide suit and the Gombe suit were filed by different plaintiffs, albeit concerning the same leadership dispute. The defendants in Abejide included the ADC, Nwosu, Mark, Aregbesola, and INEC . The Gombe suit, by contrast, was instituted by the former Deputy National Chairman (North-East) asserting a personal constitutional right of succession . Whether this distinction suffices to defeat an abuse of process argument depends on whether the two suits are substantially the same in res, parties, and reliefs sought.

The safer view, consistent with Nigerian appellate jurisprudence, is that where a court has already determined the validity of a party’s leadership in a subsisting judgment, a subsequent suit by a different plaintiff seeking the opposite result should be stayed or dismissed as an abuse of process, absent a successful appeal against the earlier decision. Justice Lifu’s failure to address the Abejide judgment in his ruling-if indeed he did not-constitutes a significant procedural oversight.

III. The Justiciability Question: Internal Party Affairs vs. Electoral Act Violations

A. The Traditional Non-Interference Principle

Nigerian courts have historically been reluctant to intervene in the internal governance of political parties. The Supreme Court’s decision in Dalhatu v. Turaki (2003) 15 NWLR (Pt. 843) 310 established the principle that the courts will not interfere in the internal affairs of a political party unless the party’s constitution or the Electoral Act has been breached in a manner that affects legal rights.

This principle was reaffirmed in Abejide, where Justice Liman held that the dispute was “non-justiciable” because it concerned the party’s internal affairs . If this holding is correct, then Justice Lifu’s assumption of jurisdiction over the Gombe suit was itself improper.

B. The Statutory Exception: Section 83(5) and the 2026 Electoral Act

However, the legal landscape has shifted with the enactment of the Electoral Act 2026. Section 83(5) of the Act (as analyzed by the Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre) distinguishes between non-justiciable party matters (leadership struggles, congresses for electing party officers, internal discipline) and justiciable matters (breaches of the Electoral Act in the conduct of primaries, candidate nomination disputes, false information in candidate documents) .

This distinction is critical to assessing the soundness of Justice Lifu’s judgment. The Gombe suit was framed as a challenge to the emergence of the Mark leadership-a quintessential “leadership struggle” that falls within the non-justiciable category under the PLAC analysis. However, the reliefs sought and granted extended to the invalidation of the party’s presidential primary and the nomination of all candidates for the 2027 elections . This latter aspect potentially engages the justiciable category of “candidate nomination disputes.”

The doctrinal tension is evident. If Justice Lifu lacked jurisdiction over the leadership question (as Justice Liman held in Abejide), he could not properly proceed to invalidate the consequences of that leadership, including the primaries. The primaries themselves, however, might be subject to challenge under a different jurisdictional rubric-but only by a plaintiff with the requisite locus standi under Section 285(14) of the Constitution, which recognizes pre-election matters brought by aspirants complaining of non-compliance with the Electoral Act or party primary guidelines.

Nafiu Bala Gombe was not an aspirant for the presidential nomination. He was a party officer asserting a succession right. His standing to challenge the presidential primary that produced Atiku is therefore highly questionable. The court’s sweeping reliefs, which effectively disenfranchised 1,503 ADC candidates , may have exceeded the jurisdictional bounds defined by the plaintiff’s standing.

IV. The Merits: Was the Mark Leadership Constitutionally Defective?

A. The Succession Claim

The core of Gombe’s case was that upon Ralph Nwosu’s resignation as National Chairman, the ADC Constitution vested the leadership in him as Deputy National Chairman (North-East) . This claim, if substantiated by the text of the ADC Constitution, presents a formidable legal argument.

Justice Lifu apparently accepted this argument, finding that the installation of an interim committee headed by Mark violated the party’s constitutional succession provisions . If the ADC Constitution indeed contains an automatic succession clause-a common feature in Nigerian party constitutions designed to ensure continuity-then the Mark leadership’s failure to comply with it would render their emergence ultra vires.

B. The Countervailing Finding in Abejide

However, Justice Liman had already examined the same constitutional question and reached a different conclusion. He held that the July 2, 2025 stakeholders’ meeting, followed by the July 29, 2025 NEC meeting monitored by INEC, constituted a valid process for the emergence of Mark and Aregbesola . The Liman court expressly found that “the transfer of leadership by Nwosu did not contravene the ADC Constitution” .

Two judges of the same court, examining the same constitutional provisions and the same factual circumstances, reached opposite conclusions. This is not a situation where new evidence emerged between July and November; the Gombe suit was filed in 2025, before the Abejide judgment . The contradiction is therefore irreconcilable at the trial level and must be resolved by the Court of Appeal.

C. The INEC Monitoring Factor

One factual point that may prove decisive on appeal is the role of INEC in the July 29, 2025 NEC meeting. Justice Liman specifically noted that the meeting was “monitored by INEC” . Under Nigerian electoral law, INEC’s monitoring of party primaries and congresses is a statutory function that lends legitimacy to the proceedings. If INEC monitored and accepted the process that produced the Mark leadership, this creates a presumption of regularity that the Gombe plaintiff would need to rebut.

Justice Lifu’s judgment, as reported, does not appear to have engaged with this presumption. The failure to address a material fact that was dispositive in the coordinate court’s reasoning constitutes a potential error of law.

V. The Reliefs: Proportionality and the Disenfranchisement Problem

A. The Sweeping Scope of Nullification

The most constitutionally troubling aspect of Justice Lifu’s judgment is the breadth of its reliefs. By invalidating not only the Mark leadership but also “the party’s congresses and convention, as well as the process that produced its candidates for the 2027 general elections” , the court effectively disenfranchised 1,503 candidates and the millions of voters who might have supported them .

Nigerian courts have repeatedly emphasized that electoral reliefs should be tailored to the violation established. In ANPP v. Goni (2012) 7 NWLR (Pt. 1298) 147, the Supreme Court cautioned against remedies that “visit the sins of the leadership on innocent candidates.” While that case concerned timelines rather than party leadership, its proportionality principle is instructive.

The Gombe plaintiff’s grievance was personal: he claimed a right to succeed Nwosu. The remedy proportionate to that grievance would have been a declaration of his entitlement and, if appropriate, an order restraining Mark from parading himself as chairman. The extension of the remedy to invalidate the nominations of candidates who were not parties to the suit and whose primaries were conducted under a leadership that had been recognized by INEC raises serious due process concerns.

B. The Absence of Necessary Parties

Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate whose nomination was invalidated, was not a party to the Gombe suit. Neither were the 1,503 other candidates whose nominations were nullified. Nigerian law is settled that a court cannot make orders affecting the legal rights of persons who are not parties to the proceedings before it, absent statutory authorization. The Supreme Court’s decision in Green v. Green (1987) 3 NWLR (Pt. 61) 480 established that “a person whose legal rights are affected by an order of court must be heard before the order is made.”

The failure to join Atiku and the other candidates as defendants in the Gombe suit constitutes a fundamental defect that may render the judgment voidable on appeal. The candidates had a direct legal interest in the validity of the primaries that produced them, and they were entitled to be heard on the question.

VI. The Appellate Prospects: A Realistic Assessment

A. Grounds for Appeal

The ADC’s Notice of Appeal and Motion for Stay of Execution, filed by Senior Advocate of Nigeria Shaibu Enejoh Aruwa, are likely to raise several strong grounds :

1. Judicial Comity: The trial judge erred in law by failing to follow the subsisting judgment of Justice Liman in Abejide, a court of coordinate jurisdiction, on the same subject matter.
2. Jurisdiction: The trial judge erred in assuming jurisdiction over a dispute that was internal to the party and non-justiciable under the doctrine of Dalhatu v. Turaki.
3. Locus Standi: The plaintiff lacked standing to challenge the presidential primary and the nominations of candidates who were not parties to the suit.
4. Due Process: The court violated the audi alteram partem principle by making orders affecting the legal rights of Atiku and other candidates without joining them as parties.
5. Proportionality: The reliefs granted were excessive and disproportionate to the grievance established.

B. The Stay of Execution

The application for stay of execution, if granted, would suspend the judgment’s operation pending appeal. Nigerian courts consider several factors in granting a stay: the strength of the appeal, the balance of convenience, and whether refusal would render the appeal nugatory. Given the pendency of the 2027 election cycle and the catastrophic consequences of the judgment for the ADC’s candidates, the balance of convenience arguably favors a stay. However, the trial court may be reluctant to stay its own judgment, and the application may need to proceed to the Court of Appeal.

C. The Abejide Factor on Appeal

The Court of Appeal will face the unenviable task of reconciling two contradictory judgments of the Federal High Court. It may:

• Affirm Abejide and reverse Gombe, holding that the leadership dispute was non-justiciable and that Justice Lifu erred in assuming jurisdiction.
• Affirm Gombe and overturn Abejide, holding that Justice Liman erred in declining jurisdiction and that the Mark leadership was indeed unconstitutional.
• Remit the matter for consolidation and determination by a single judge or a full panel.

The second option appears unlikely given the settled non-justiciability doctrine and the deference typically accorded to a prior coordinate judgment. The first option-reversal of Gombe-is the more probable outcome, though the Court of Appeal may craft a narrower ruling that avoids a direct pronouncement on the merits of the leadership question.

VII. Structural Implications: The Case for Legislative Reform

A. The Coordinate Jurisdiction Problem

The ADC crisis demonstrates that Nigeria’s electoral dispute resolution system lacks a mechanism for consolidating related suits filed before different judges of the same court. The result is the spectacle of two judges of equal rank issuing contradictory orders on the same subject matter, with INEC caught in the middle and the electorate left in confusion.

A legislative amendment to the Electoral Act could address this by requiring that all suits concerning the leadership or nomination processes of a single political party be consolidated before a single judge or a designated panel. The Chief Judge of the Federal High Court could be empowered to assign all related pre-election matters to one judge for coordinated case management.

B. The Need for Accelerated Appellate Review

The timelines for pre-election appeals under Section 285(11) of the Constitution (14 days from judgment) are designed to ensure finality before elections. However, the ADC appeal, if it proceeds through the normal appellate process, may not be resolved before the deadline for INEC to publish the final list of candidates. The Court of Appeal should prioritize this appeal and hear it on an expedited basis, recognizing that the political stability of the 2027 election depends on a definitive resolution.

C. The Role of INEC

INEC’s response to the conflicting judgments will be closely scrutinized. The Commission has stated that it will await the Certified True Copy of the Gombe judgment before taking any position . This is prudent, but INEC must also consider the Abejide judgment, which it presumably received in July 2026. If INEC recognized the Mark leadership after Abejide, its subsequent derecognition based on Gombe would be inconsistent. The Commission should seek judicial clarification through an interpleader-type proceeding or await appellate resolution before making any consequential decisions affecting candidate nominations.

VIII. Conclusion

Justice Peter Lifu’s November 5, 2026 judgment in Gombe v. ADC is, on its face, a robust assertion of judicial power to enforce party constitutionalism. Its substantive finding-that the installation of an interim committee in disregard of constitutional succession provisions is void-articulates a defensible principle of internal party democracy. However, the judgment is doctrinally unsound in several critical respects.

First, it was delivered in apparent disregard of a subsisting judgment of a coordinate court on the same subject matter, violating principles of judicial comity and raising legitimate concerns of abuse of process. Second, it assumed jurisdiction over a leadership dispute that Nigerian courts have traditionally treated as non-justiciable, and its extension of reliefs to invalidate candidate nominations exceeded the jurisdictional bounds defined by the plaintiff’s standing. Third, it made orders affecting the legal rights of Atiku Abubakar and 1,503 other candidates without joining them as parties, violating fundamental due process.

The Court of Appeal now bears the responsibility of resolving the conflict between Abejide and Gombe. Whatever the outcome, the case has exposed a structural deficiency in Nigeria’s electoral dispute resolution architecture that requires urgent legislative remedy. The consolidation of related pre-election suits and the accelerated hearing of appeals in cases with national electoral consequences are no longer optional reforms; they are imperatives for the integrity of the 2027 general elections.

For legal scholars, Gombe v. ADC will be studied as a cautionary tale about the limits of judicial intervention in party politics and the perils of coordinate jurisdiction conflicts. For Nigerians, it is a stark reminder that the rule of law, however majestic in theory, can become an instrument of political destabilization when deployed without adequate procedural safeguards.

References

1. Leadership Newspapers, “Tinubu Is In Panic – Atiku’s Aide, Analyst Blast Court Ruling Against ADC,” November 5, 2026.
2. Leadership Newspapers, “Unbowed By Court Ruling, ADC Candidates Vow To Stay In 2027 Race,” November 7, 2026.
3. Policy and Legal Advocacy Centre, “Review of Relevant Information on Nigeria’s Democracy Factsheet: Monitoring Political Parties and Jurisdictional Limits,” March 2026.
4. The Guardian Nigeria, “ADC: Osunbor Faults Lifu’s Judgment, Says It Contradicts Three Existing Court Rulings,” November 5, 2026.
5. Arise News, “ADC Appeals Judgment Voiding Atiku’s Candidacy, Notifies INEC,” November 5, 2026.
6. The Guardian Nigeria, “Reprieve as Court Quashes Abejide’s Case Against Mark-Led ADC,” July 2, 2026.
7. Izy Global Partners LLP, “Supreme Court Strikes Out Youth Party’s Appeal Against INEC as Statute Barred: The Day of Judgment Is Day One Under Section 285(11),” September 28, 2026.
8. Leadership Newspapers, “Lifu Judgment Academic, Overtaken By Events – ADC PCC,” November 4, 2026.
9. TheCable, “ADC Appeals Judgment Sacking Mark-Led Leadership, Asks INEC to Suspend Action,” November 5, 2026.
10. TheWill News, “Court Affirms David Mark-Led ADC Leadership, Dismisses Abejide’s Suit,” July 2, 2026.
11. Lagos Television, “Atiku Vows to Contest 2027 Election as ADC Challenges Court Ruling,” November 6, 2026.

Cases Cited

• Dalhatu v. Turaki (2003) 15 NWLR (Pt. 843) 310
• Saraki v. Kotoye (1992) 9 NWLR (Pt. 264) 156
• Arubo v. Aiyeleru (1993) 3 NWLR (Pt. 280) 126
• Osakue v. Federal College of Education (Technical), Asaba (2010) 10 NWLR (Pt. 1201) 1
• Olorunfemi v. Asho (2000) 2 NWLR (Pt. 643) 143
• ANPP v. Goni (2012) 7 NWLR (Pt. 1298) 147
• Green v. Green (1987) 3 NWLR (Pt. 61) 480