By Okoi Obono-Obla
What Goes Around Will Surely Come Around
The leadership of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), headed by Senator David Mark, reacted to the judgment delivered against it by Honourable Justice Peter Odo Lifu of the Federal High Court, Abuja, dated 5 November 2026, in language that went beyond ordinary disagreement with a court decision.
In Suit No. FHC/ABJ/CS/1819/2025, filed by Nafiu Bala Gombe, Justice Lifu declared the David Mark-led caretaker committee illegal and nullified actions taken under it, including the processes that produced Atiku Abubakar as the ADC presidential candidate.
In a statement titled “Lifu Judgment: APC Wants to Set Nigeria on Fire,” the party’s National Publicity Secretary, Mallam Bolaji Abdullahi, said the candidates supported by Nigerians “could be erased by the stroke of a reckless judicial pen.”
He added: “We have seen this script before. When they are scared that the opposition is gathering steam, they use their judges in the courts to influence legally indefensible judgments.”
He further alleged: “We have reasons to believe that the judgment had long been written on this case. The Sokoto rally was simply a trigger that stampeded its delivery.”
Former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar, in his own statement, said: “The timing of this judgment is no coincidence. It is part of a strategy to weaken my support in the North and frustrate a campaign whose message is resonating across the country.”
In his later statement of 6 November, issued in Sokoto, he declared: “Let me be clear to every Nigerian who has stood with us: I am in this race. I am not going anywhere. We will be on the ballot.”
That language was a classical demonstration of an unhinged and unrestrained temperament, rooted in the heat of passion. But the law does not reward retaliation.
Under the law, if a defendant responds to provocation with “an eye for an eye” and, in the heat of passion, acts inappropriately towards the person who provoked him, the full weight of the law will still descend on him. In Nigerian criminal law, provocation is at best a partial defence to murder, capable in a proper case of reducing murder to manslaughter. It does not justify the retaliation, it does not excuse the offence, and it is not a general defence in tort. “Tooth for tooth” is not a recognised legal principle.
They called Honourable Justice Peter Odo Lifu names. I know him very well. We sat in the same law class at the University of Jos, Plateau State, from 1985 to 1989, and we were also at the Nigerian Law School, Victoria Island, Lagos, from 1989 to 1990. I have not seen him since we left Law School in July 1990.
He is from Yala Local Government Area of Cross River State. He was a quiet, self-effacing, shy, intelligent, honest and God-fearing young man, and a reflective person. I strongly believe he has not changed. He is doing his very difficult job to the best of his ability and capacity.
But Nigeria is a difficult country, especially in its public service. When you perform your job to the best of your ability in Nigeria, you are marked out, and people will look for all sorts of rubbish to heap on you to stain your reputation, because they want everyone to be like them.
I suffered horribly when I was the chairman of an investigative body and they came after me. That is a story for another day.
I understand that the same people who abused, railed against and harangued Justice Peter Odo Lifu, who by virtue of his office is restrained from joining issues with them, have filed a motion seeking a stay of his judgment. The ADC filed a notice of appeal and a motion for stay of execution dated 6 November 2026, and wrote to INEC asking it not to act pending the appeal.
You are coming before the same court you lampooned, to implore it as a supplicant. Is that not ironic?
Conclusion
A judgment may be appealed. It may be criticised on legal grounds. But a court should not be abused because its decision is unwelcome, especially by those who must return to that same court to ask for its indulgence.
What goes around will surely come around.
