Court battles may dismantle opposition ahead of 2027, lawyer warns

An Awka-based legal practitioner, Chibunna Okoli-Akirika, has feared that the ongoing court battles and internal party squabbles may dismantle opposition political parties ahead of the upcoming General Elections.

He expressed his feeling in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria in Owerri, describing recent judicial judgments as early warning signs of a looming wider political storm.

Okoli-Akirika, a former Anambra Commissioner for Lands and Secretary of the Labour Party, was reacting to Thursday’s court judgment that sacked the David Mark-led African Democratic Congress (ADC).

“The court judgment, though of first instance, has in the interim expectedly devastated ADC in structure and decimated it in spirit,” he said.

He said the court decision signalled looming political hurdles for the opposition parties ahead of the 2027 polls.

The lawyer advised that major political actors must not view the judicial outcome as an isolated ADC setback, but an urgent call to forge a broad opposition coalition.

He further warned against the fragmentation of the opposition political parties.

He highlighted previous disruptions targeting opposition interests in Delta, Akwa Ibom, and Sokoto States, alongside emerging controversies surrounding party registers in Kano and Kaduna.

“Furthermore, INEC’s public admission of the existence of officially invented ghost voters in the voters register is a pointer that all will be fair,” Okoli-Akirika said.

He argued that while key opposition figures face legal and administrative pressure, no platform remained completely immune from the political friction currently afflicting the ADC.

“Today, it is ADC, tomorrow it could be any other party or individual,” Okoli-Akirika said.

He said that sections 6 and 287 of the 1999 Constitution made court decisions binding, leaving affected parties with no choice but to comply, while appeals pend.

He urged frontline opposition leaders, who placed second, third, and fourth in the 2023 Presidential Election to “quickly fuse their structures into a single political bloc.

“What is stopping the fusion of the then second runner-up with the then third and fourth runners-up?” he asked.

Okoli-Akirika urged opposition leaders to put national interest above personal political ambitions to guarantee Nigerians a viable democratic choice during the 2027 polls.

NAN