The Federal Court of Canada has upheld a decision classifying Nigeria’s two major political parties — the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) — as terrorist organisations. The ruling also denied asylum to Douglas Egharevba, a former member of both parties, over his decade-long affiliation with them.
In a judgment delivered on June 17, 2025, Justice Phuong Ngo dismissed Egharevba’s application for judicial review after Canada’s Immigration Appeal Division (IAD) found him inadmissible under the country’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA).
According to Peoples Gazette, the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness argued that the APC and PDP were implicated in political violence, democratic subversion, and electoral bloodshed in Nigeria.
Court documents revealed that Egharevba was a PDP member from 1999 to 2007 before joining the APC, where he remained until 2017. He relocated to Canada in September 2017 and disclosed his political background during the immigration process.
Canadian authorities flagged his affiliations based on intelligence reports linking both parties to electoral violence and politically motivated killings. The IAD relied heavily on evidence from the PDP’s conduct during the 2003 state elections and 2004 local government polls, where the party allegedly engaged in ballot stuffing, voter intimidation, and the killing of opposition supporters.
The tribunal concluded that the PDP leadership benefited from the violence and failed to intervene, meeting Canada’s legal threshold for subversion under paragraph 34(1)(b.1) of the IRPA.
Justice Ngo affirmed that mere membership in an organisation connected to terrorism or democratic subversion is enough to establish inadmissibility under paragraph 34(1)(f) of the IRPA — even without evidence of direct participation.
Egharevba’s argument that political violence was common across all Nigerian parties was rejected. The court further ruled that, under Canadian law, even flawed elections in Nigeria still qualify as a democratic process — and undermining them amounts to subversion.
This decision effectively ends Egharevba’s bid for asylum in Canada, with deportation proceedings now expected to follow.
0 Comments