Court Rules In Favour Of ADC, SDP, Asks Kaduna CP To Pay Them N15m
Justice Murtala Zubairu of Kaduna State High Court has struck out the case filed by the state Commissioner of police against the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP), describing it as an ‘abuse of court process‘.
The judge also awarded N15 million damages against the police chief for violating the fundamental rights of members of the political parties in question to peaceful assembly.
Team@orientactualmags.com learned that the judge in his ruling on Wednesday also granted a perpetual injunction restraining the police commissioner, cops, and other security agencies from disrupting or interfering with lawful political meetings and rallies in the state.
The judge submitted that the police acted unlawfully when they disrupted two meetings organized by top politicians in the state including a former governor, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, and ADC and SDP big wigs on August 30 and September 4, 2025, respectively.
The first meeting was reportedly disrupted by thugs in the presence of cops, while the second was halted by the police citing an ex parte order obtained from the court.
The police had filed the suit marked KDH/KAD/NPD/1315/2025, seeking to suspend all political meetings in Kaduna State pending investigations into alleged threats of violence.
However, Justice Zubairu dismissed the suit calling it incompetent and politically motivated, while describing it as an abuse of court process.
He declared that the police acted in bad faith and exceeded its statutory powers under the Police Act 2020.
‘The notion that the police can indefinitely suspend the fundamental rights of association and assembly of every political party in a state is an overreach and constitutes an abuse of statutory powers.
The duty of the police is to provide security for peaceful assemblies, not to ban them pre-emptively based on vague fears or speculative intelligence’ he said.
The court also declared that the ex parte injunction obtained by the police on September 4, 2025, violated Section 40 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended), which guarantees the right to peaceful assembly and association, and ordered it dismissed for procedural irregularities and lack of merit.
Citing appellate precedents such as Inspector-General of Police v. All Nigeria Peoples Party (2007) and APC v. Inspector-General of Police (2014), Justice Zubairu reasserted that the police have no constitutional or statutory power to prohibit peaceful assemblies.
The judge further ruled that the failure of the police to investigate petitions submitted by the political parties on August 30, 2025, attack amounted to a breach of statutory duty under Sections 4, 83, and 84 of the Police Act.
‘The evidence before this court shows a clear abdication of duty. Rather than protect the victims of the August 30 incident, the police sought judicial cover to curtail their rights. This is unacceptable in a constitutional democracy’ he added.
Consequently, the court ordered the police to pay N15 million to the respondents as compensatory, general, aggravated, and exemplary damages for breach of fundamental rights, wrongful injunction, and abuse of statutory duty.
The breakdown of the award includes N5 million for the arbitrary suspension of meetings organized by the parties, N5 million for obtaining a wrongful injunction, and N5 million for failure to investigate the reported attack-Team@orientactualmags.com Do you have any information you wish to share with us? Do you want us to cover your event or programme? Kindly send SMS to 08035023079, 08059100286, 09094171980 or get in touch via orientactualmag@gmail.com. Thank you
