The Federal Court of Canada has declared that Nigeria’s two leading political parties, the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), are terrorist organisations.
The ruling also denied asylum to Douglas Egharevba, a former member of both parties, citing his decade-long affiliation.
In a judgment delivered on June 17, 2025, Justice Phuong Ngo dismissed Egharevba’s application for judicial review.
The decision follows the earlier ruling by the Immigration Appeal Division (IAD), which found him inadmissible under Canada’s Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA).
Court documents reveal that Egharevba was a PDP member from 1999 to 2007 before joining the APC, where he remained until 2017.
After moving to Canada in September 2017, he disclosed his political history. Canadian authorities flagged his affiliations, citing intelligence reports linking both parties to electoral violence and politically motivated killings.
The IAD based its ruling largely on the PDP’s conduct during the 2003 state elections and 2004 local government polls, when the party allegedly engaged in ballot stuffing, voter intimidation, and attacks on opposition supporters.
The tribunal concluded that the party leadership benefited from the violence and failed to take action to stop it, meeting Canada’s legal definition of subversion under paragraph 34(1)(b.1) of the IRPA.
Justice Ngo affirmed that mere membership in an organisation associated with terrorism or democratic subversion is sufficient to trigger inadmissibility under paragraph 34(1)(f) of the IRPA, even without proof of personal involvement in violent acts. Egharevba’s argument that political violence was widespread across all Nigerian parties was dismissed by the court.
The judgment also noted that, under Canadian law, even flawed elections constitute a democratic process, and actions undermining them qualify as subversion.
The ruling effectively ends Egharevba’s asylum claim, with deportation proceedings expected to follow.