My Lord, Honourable Justice Isah Dashen of the Federal High Court, Lokoja, was beaten to second place by his colleague in Abuja, Honourable Justice Peter Lifu, in the race for the judge that constitutes the gravest danger to democracy.
Justice Lifu was so much in a hurry to claim the title that when the Court of Appeal ordered him to arrest his intended judgment, he flouted the order and overruled the appellate court by ordering the deregistration of the African Democratic Congress, ADC. To arrest the growing disorder, the appellate court sat the next day and issued a bench ruling immediately reversing Justice Lifu.
In the case of Justice Dashen, he went for the jugular of the National Democratic Party, NDC, which, along with the ADC, are the two largest opposition parties. He had, on International Human Rights Day, December 10, 2025, ruled that the NDC met the criteria to be registered as a political party and ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to register the party. INEC obeyed. Then Justice Dashen, on June 26, 2026, announced he had changed his mind and sat on appeal over his own judgment. He ordered the NDC deregistered. This will be the third attempt in eleven weeks to deregister leading opposition parties. The first was the 2026 April Fool Day announcement by INEC under Joash Amupitan, a professor of law, that it had removed the names of the ADC Chairman, Senator David Mark, and National Secretary, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, from its portal, thereby rendering it headless. INEC had premised its mischief on the Court of Appeal directive that the status quo be maintained in the party’s leadership tussle. But rather than obey the court, the Amupitan-INEC decided to behead the party. It took the intervention of the Supreme Court to restore the ADC leadership. The second attempt was, of course, that of Justice Lifu.
