Umeh: Judge who ordered NDC’s registration can’t now kill it

Senator Victor Umeh has accused Justice Inyang Ekwo of a legal somersault over the ruling against the Nigeria Democratic Congress, NDC, saying the judge cannot create the party with one order and later destroy it with another.

Umeh, who represents Anambra Central and is a chieftain of the NDC, said the June 26 ruling against the party amounted to a “total miscarriage of justice.”

He argued that Justice Ekwo’s earlier judgment of December 10, 2025, compelled the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, to register the NDC.

According to him, INEC obeyed the order, registered the party, supervised its processes and allowed it to conduct primaries.

Umeh said it was therefore wrong for the court to now issue a ruling that could frustrate the party’s participation in the 2027 general elections.

“That order Justice Ekwo made has borne children; it has produced effects. INEC has obeyed it, complied with it, did not appeal against it, registered the party,” Umeh said.

“Because if he hadn’t ordered INEC to register NDC, it wouldn’t have existed. So the NDC was a creation of the order of this Justice Inyang Ekwo.”

The senator alleged that the latest ruling had no real benefit to the Peace Mass Movement, PMP, except to weaken the NDC and shut it out of the election.

“He delivered his judgment on the 10th of December, 2025. This is June 2026. Of what benefit is his order to PMP? Nothing. Except to disable the NDC from taking part in the election,” he said.

Umeh also dismissed the claim that the NDC’s victory sign logo belonged to PMP.

He said the victory sign is a global symbol used by several historical and political figures and does not automatically belong to any association.

According to him, a logo can only become the exclusive property of a political party when INEC registers that party with the symbol.

“The victory sign is a global sign. It doesn’t belong to anybody. It doesn’t belong to PMP,” he said.

“If your party is registered with that logo, it becomes your property.”

Umeh argued that PMP was not a registered political party and therefore could not claim ownership of the logo.

He said INEC had earlier raised the issue of similarity between the NDC logo and that of PMP during the original proceedings, but Justice Ekwo dismissed it in his December 2025 judgment.

The senator maintained that since the court had already made a finding on the issue, it could not be used later to undo the same judgment.

“He made the finding with PMP’s logo. If PMP’s logo was anything that would have prevented him from making an order that NDC should be registered, he had come to that finding. But he dismissed it,” Umeh said.

He insisted that the only option open to anyone dissatisfied with the December judgment was to appeal against it, not to ask the same court to review itself.

Umeh said Justice Ekwo had no power to review the judgment because the necessary grounds for such a review were absent.

According to him, such grounds would include fraud, deceit or lack of jurisdiction.

“He has no power to review this judgment because the elements that would have entitled him to do so were absent: fraud, deceit or lack of jurisdiction,” he said.

The NDC chieftain said the ruling had created a major political problem because party primaries had already ended on May 30.

He said the party had nominated more than 1,000 candidates nationwide, making it practically impossible for all of them to move to another party through substitution.

“The door has been shut. May 30, that’s when it ends,” he said.

“The only window that is open will be substitution in another political party. If somebody withdraws there, the question will be: will all the members of NDC, over a thousand candidates they nominated nationwide in Nigeria, now go into another party and ask all of them to step down so that all of them will be substituted into it? The answer is that it is impossible, practically impossible.”

Umeh said Peter Obi had also reacted to the ruling, describing it as unsustainable and dangerous to Nigeria’s democracy.

According to him, Obi believes the court cannot “do and undo” in a manner that creates confusion in the political process.

The senator called for the ruling to be set aside on appeal.

He said members of the NDC were entitled to the protection of Nigerian law and should not be denied the right to contest the 2027 elections.

“The only justice of this matter will be to set aside this obnoxious, unsustainable ruling of Justice Inyang Ekwo,” Umeh said.

He added that the law should not allow an unregistered association to be used to destroy a political party that had already been registered by INEC.