The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has updated its database to reflect the Supreme Court‘s ruling, reinstating David Mark as National Chairman of the ADC and recognizing former Osun State Governor Rauf Aregbesola as National Secretary.
Also restored to their respective positions are Mani Ahmad as National Treasurer, Akibu Dalhatu as National Financial Secretary, and Oserheimen Osunbor as National Legal Adviser, a sweeping reversal that effectively undoes weeks of administrative uncertainty triggered by a lower court’s order.
In April, INEC moved to delist Mark and the other principal officers from its website, acting on a directive from the Court of Appeal that had ordered the preservation of the “status quo ante bellum,” a legal term meaning the state of affairs as it existed before the dispute erupted.
For the Mark camp, the delisting was nothing short of a political ambush, stripping them of official recognition and handing momentum to a rival faction contesting control of the party.
The move drew an immediate and furious response from Mark’s loyalists, who accused the court of overreach and vowed to fight the ruling to the highest level. Opposition voices, too, weighed in, with critics questioning whether judicial orders were being deployed as instruments of factional warfare rather than instruments of justice.
On Thursday, the Supreme Court delivered what many legal analysts are calling a watershed moment in the protracted dispute. The apex court nullified the Court of Appeal’s earlier ruling, holding that the order to maintain the status quo had become legally untenable once the substantive proceedings before that court had been concluded.
In addition to quashing the appellate court’s directive, the Supreme Court upheld the appeal filed by the Mark-led faction and issued a pointed instruction: the substantive case brought by aggrieved party member Nafiu Bala Gombe at the Federal High Court must be heard expeditiously and determined on its merits.
In other words, the apex court did not rule on who rightfully controls the ADC; it simply cleared away a procedural obstacle while directing that the real contest be settled properly and without further delay.
For the Mark faction, the ruling has been received with undisguised jubilation. Senior figures within the group have described the reinstatement as a decisive affirmation of due process and a vindication of their claim to legitimate leadership of the party.
There is, understandably, a sense of relief; weeks of operating in a legal grey zone, stripped of official recognition, have taken their toll on the party’s internal cohesion and public image.
The ADC’s internal crisis reflects a pattern that has become distressingly familiar in Nigerian party politics: factional disputes that migrate from internal party organs to the courts, then upward through the appellate hierarchy, consuming time, resources, and institutional goodwill along the way.
For a mid-tier opposition party aspiring to relevance in an increasingly competitive political landscape, the reputational cost of such prolonged instability is difficult to overstate.
With the Federal High Court now under instruction from the Supreme Court to hear the matter promptly, all eyes will turn to how swiftly that tribunal moves and what it ultimately decides.
WHAT YOU SHOULD KNOW
The Supreme Court’s ruling restoring Senator David Mark‘s recognition as ADC chairman is a significant legal victory, but it is not a final resolution.
INEC has updated its register accordingly, yet the core dispute over who legitimately leads the African Democratic Congress remains unresolved and is still pending before the Federal High Court. Simply put, Mark is back on paper, but the battle for the soul of the ADC is far from settled.
