Canadian Court Upholds Ruling Declaring Nigeria’s APC, PDP Terrorist Organisations

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 Ottawa, June 17, 2025 — A Canadian Federal Court has upheld a landmark immigration tribunal decision classifying Nigeria’s two dominant political parties — the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) — as terrorist organisations under Canadian law.

The judgment, delivered by Justice Phuong Ngo and obtained by Peoples Gazette, also affirmed the refusal of asylum to Douglas Egharevba, a former member of both parties, citing his decade-long affiliation despite his denial of personal involvement in political violence.

The court backed the Immigration Appeal Division’s (IAD) finding that both parties were deeply implicated in electoral violence, democratic subversion, and politically motivated killings, particularly highlighting the PDP’s record during the 2003 state and 2004 local government elections under former President Olusegun Obasanjo and Vice-President Atiku Abubakar.

Justice Ngo ruled that party leadership benefited from widespread voter intimidation, ballot stuffing, and killings of opposition supporters without taking action to stop them — conduct that met Canada’s definition of subverting a democratic process under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA).

Significantly, the court reaffirmed that mere membership in such organisations during violent periods — regardless of personal participation — is grounds for inadmissibility under IRPA’s security provisions.

Egharevba, who joined the PDP in 1999 and later defected to the APC in 2007 before leaving in 2017, had argued that political violence was endemic across all Nigerian parties. The court rejected this defence, stressing that even flawed Nigerian elections qualify as a democratic process under Canadian law, and undermining them for political gain amounts to subversion.

The ruling is one of the strongest pronouncements by a foreign court equating Nigeria’s ruling and former ruling parties with terrorist entities under international law. Egharevba now faces likely deportation as his asylum claim has been effectively terminated.