Why NDC Deregistration Order Will Not Stand – Enekweizu 

The National Secretary of the Nigeria Democratic Congress (NDC), Ikenna Enekweizu, has claimed that the court judgment nullifying the party’s registration will not stand.

Naija News reports that a Federal High Court judgment in Lokoja, Kogi State, on Friday set aside its earlier judgment directing the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to register NDC as a political party.

Reacting to the development, Enekweizu, in an interview with ARISE Television, pointed out that the court had already established the fact that the Peace Movement Party (PMP) does not exist and is not even among the political parties that applied to INEC for registration.

He said, “In fact, we’re not just registered. The original substantive judgment of the court was that we’re deemed to have been registered by INEC, deemed registered.

“But if you read the entirety of that judgment, a lot of consequential orders were made that made it made it look like we were actually registered by INEC from when we actually applied.

“INEC had a duty to register us, refused for no justification to register us after we had met all the requirements for registration. That is what drove us to court, and the court held that we, when INEC, in course of hearing, admitted that the only reason for which we had refused to reach us, which was that our logo resembled that of APC, not Peace Movement Party.

“The letter they wrote to us, and on the basis of which we went to court, stated that our logo resembled that of APC, All Progressives Congress, that is why we went to court, and that is why it was not necessary at the time we went to court, to join any other party other than the other than INEC.

“In fact, we’ve had any reason to have joined anybody at that stage, it will have been APC itself, because the reason for refusing to register us was that our logo resembled that of APC, not a non-existing PMP.

“Now it was only when we got to court, after we had filed and served our originating summons, that INEC, in their response to the originating summons, mentioned the name PMP, stating that our logo looked like that of PMP. It is a fundamental principle of law that you cannot, reprobate and approbate.

“If it has given one reason for refusing to register NDC, and for which we have gone to court, the moment you abandoned that reason in the course of the trial and actually admitted before the court that reason you gave originally did not actually exist, you had conceded to that judgment, and so we had no reason from the beginning to have joined PMP.

“Now, basically, when they raised PMP as a reason, a new reason for which we were never told, our response was very simple: one, as at the time we went to court, there were 18 registered political parties, PMP was not one of them. Two, 171 political associations applied to be registered as political parties, PMP was not one of them.

“So there was no reason for you to use a non-existing PMP as a justification for not wanting to register us. In fact, during the hearing, a judge asked first, does INEC now admit that our logo does not look like that of APC? INEC said yes. Now is PMP a registered political party? INEC said no. Is PMP one of the 171 that applied for registration? INEC said no.

“One would wonder if PMP was one of the registered political institutions during that registration process, in what way were the rights breached?”