BY SEGUN ADEBAYO – A single judicial stroke has triggered a political earthquake in Nigeria, leaving former Vice President Atiku Abubakar’s 2027 presidential bid hanging in the balance. The sudden jolt comes after a Federal High Court in Abuja sacked the Senator David Mark factional leadership of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), completely redrawing the race for the nation’s presidential villa.
Consequently, all actions taken by the sacked leadership, including the nomination of former Vice President Atiku Abubakar as the party’s presidential candidate, have been voided by the Court.
In a decisive ruling on Thursday, November 5, 2026, Justice Peter Lifu, threw spanner into Atiku’s qualification for the January 16, 2027 poll, creating fresh uncertainty about the main opposition’s legal standing for next year’s general elections.
Declaring the Mark-led Caretaker Committee illegal. the Court held that the Mark-led Committee’s emergence violated the ADC constitution and the Electoral Act, and therefore its primary that produced Atiku as standard bearer cannot stand.
Bala Gombe, the former National Deputy Chairman (North-East), had initiated the legal challenge by arguing that he was the rightful successor following the resignation of the former National Chairman, Chief Ralph Nwosu and further contended that the subsequent takeover by Senator Mark’s committee flagrantly violated the party’s constitution.
Siding with Gombe, Justice Lifu granted orders restraining Senator David Mark and Rauf Aregbesola from parading themselves as the National Chairman and National Secretary in the sweeping judgment that effectively freezes the authority of the Mark-led faction and nullifies its previous administrative decisions.
Agreeing with the plaintiff’s prayers. Justice Lifu ruled, “All actions taken by the Mark-led Caretaker Committee, including the presidential primary, are illegal, null and void”. The court’s judgment effectively stripped Atiku of the party ticket on the eve of the final stretch to 2027.
Coming barely 24 hours after Atiku staged a massive campaign rally in Sokoto, the ruling is threatening to spark a chain of legal and political reactions in an already tense presidential contest.
As expected, the ADC has swiftly pushed back against the legal setback and rejecting the court’s decision, the party’s National Welfare Secretary, Nkemakolam Ukandu, who joined the suit as an interested party, said an immediate challenge will be filed at the Court of Appeal.
According to Ukandu, there is no cause for alarm as both the David Mark-led party leadership and Atiku’s presidential candidacy remain completely intact pending the coming judicial review.
But for now, political watchers are already expressing concerns that a single judicial stroke seems to be re-arranging Atiku’s path to the ballot and by invalidating his ADC ticket, the court may have pulled the rug out from under the opposition heavyweight.
Reflecting on the ruling, ADC insiders expressed concerns that unless the judgment is swiftly overturned on appeal, the former Vice President in on the brink of total disqualification from the 2027 race.
Clearly, this devastating judicial roadblock presents a major setback for the ADC’s standard bearer, who has been campaigning on a high-stakes platform to restore fuel subsidies and reopen Nigeria’s borders. He now faces a crippling qualification crisis and this obvious threat is not from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), but rather from an escalating, scorched-earth leadership war tearing through his own party for more than one year now.
Also, with this latest development, ADC stakeholders and loyalists are now scrambling to re-strategise as rivals move to capitalize on the sudden power vacuum to step up their political maneuverings, campaigns and engagement with voters ahead of the 2027 general elections.
