Party says electoral umpire is shifting position, freezing correspondence and setting a trap that could deny it the right to field candidates in 2027.
ABUJA, Nigeria — The African Democratic Congress has erupted in fury, accusing the Independent National Electoral Commission of building a legal and administrative trap that could shut the party out of the 2027 general elections.
In a hard hitting evidentiary brief released by the party’s spokesman, Bolaji Abdullahi, the ADC said INEC is acting in direct conflict with its own sworn records, court filings and internal recognition of the party’s current leadership.
At the centre of the storm is the leadership transition that brought Senator David Mark in as National Chairman and Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola in as National Secretary after the party’s National Executive Committee meeting of 29 July 2025.
The ADC says the transition was not only lawful but openly known to INEC.
It insists the commission monitored the meeting, updated its internal records and later filed a sworn affidavit before the Federal High Court on 12 September 2025, in which it allegedly treated the Mark led National Working Committee as a completed reality.
For the ADC, that is the smoking gun.
The party says INEC cannot one day accept a leadership structure as valid and the next day behave as though the same structure has no standing at all.
According to the party, that is not caution.
It is sabotage.
The fresh row deepened after INEC reportedly declared that it would no longer receive correspondence from the ADC while the leadership dispute remains unresolved in court.
That move, the party says, is not neutral administration but a calculated attempt to run down the clock.
The ADC argues that the commission has fixed 10 May as a critical deadline for the submission of election documents and is now using silence and procedural freeze to create what it calls “artificial non-compliance”.
In plain language, the party says INEC is building a trap.
If the courts do not resolve the matter before the deadline, the ADC fears it could be denied the chance to present candidates on the grounds that it failed to meet statutory requirements.
The party says the danger is not hypothetical.
It says the commission’s refusal to accept letters, notices and other lawful correspondence from the Mark led leadership could be used later as an excuse to say the party missed crucial steps.
That, the ADC insists, would amount to exclusion by bureaucracy.
INEC, however, has defended its position by saying it must avoid taking steps that could render the court process meaningless.
The commission says it is acting to preserve the status quo while the matter remains before the courts.
It has also suggested that it will not engage either of the rival factions until the legal dispute is settled.
But the ADC says that explanation collapses under its own weight.
If INEC had already recognised the leadership transition, the party argues, then the commission cannot now turn around and pretend the same transition is still unsettled whenever fresh party documents are due.
The party says that is self contradiction dressed up as caution.
It also accuses the commission of crossing the line from umpire to participant.
By shifting position and issuing a fresh pronouncement, the ADC says INEC has inserted itself into a case already before the court and is now affecting the outcome by administrative means rather than judicial ones.
That is why the party is speaking in such hostile terms.
It says the commission is no longer merely managing electoral procedure.
It is, in the ADC’s words, creating conditions that amount to a “civilian dictatorship”.
The wording is dramatic, but the political anger behind it is plain.
The ADC believes the matter goes far beyond one internal party dispute.
It says the larger question is whether an electoral commission that is meant to be a referee can be allowed to change the rules mid game, especially when the effect could be to weaken an opposition platform before an election cycle even begins.
That fear is not limited to the party’s top leadership.
The ADC youth wing has already moved aggressively, issuing a 72 hour ultimatum to INEC and threatening wider public action if the commission does not reverse itself.
The youths say the commission has no business freezing the party’s lawful business on the basis of a dispute that remains unresolved in court.
They want the Mark led structure restored on INEC’s portal, all correspondence resumed and what they call the party’s constitutional rights protected without further delay.
The bitterness of the fight has also exposed the ugly side of political litigation in Nigeria, where internal party disputes can quickly become instruments of exclusion.
What begins as a quarrel over leadership can end as a battle over survival.
And that is exactly what the ADC says is now happening.
The party’s complaint is simple, even if the legal layers are not.
It says INEC already knew who its leadership was.
It says INEC documented that fact.
It says INEC filed an affidavit to that effect.
And it says the commission is now behaving as though none of it ever happened.
That, the ADC insists, is not just unfair.
It is dangerous.
For now, the fight is headed deeper into the courts and deeper into the political trenches.
But the wider fear in opposition circles is already clear.
If INEC can freeze one party’s correspondence today, who is safe tomorrow.
If deadlines can be used as a weapon against one faction today, what stops the same machinery being turned against another when the stakes rise.
That is the question the ADC wants Nigerians to ask.
And that is why the party has chosen to frame the dispute not as a mere paperwork row, but as a high stakes struggle over access, legitimacy and the right to compete.
In a country where election seasons often begin long before campaign flags are raised, the battle now unfolding between the ADC and INEC may prove to be one of the earliest and sharpest tests of 2027.
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