Canadian court declares APC, PDP terrorist organisations
The Federal Court of Canada has upheld a controversial ruling that categorised Nigeria’s two dominant political parties — the All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) — as terrorist organisations. The decision also denied asylum to a former member, Douglas Egharevba, over his decade-long political affiliation with both parties.
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) ruled him inadmissible under the Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA).
According to details obtained by PulseNets from Peoples Gazette, Canada’s Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness argued that both APC and PDP had been implicated in political violence, subversion of democracy, and electoral bloodshed in Nigeria.
Court documents seen by PulseNets showed that Egharevba was a PDP member from 1999 to 2007 before defecting to the APC, where he remained until 2017. He later moved to Canada in September 2017, openly disclosing his political history during his immigration process.
Canadian immigration authorities reportedly flagged his political affiliations, citing intelligence reports that linked both the APC and PDP to electoral violence and politically motivated killings.
The IAD’s decision, PulseNets learnt, relied heavily on the PDP’s conduct during the 2003 state elections and 2004 local government polls — periods in which the party allegedly engaged in ballot stuffing, voter intimidation, and killings of opposition supporters.
The tribunal found that the party leadership benefited from the violence and failed to take steps to stop it, meeting Canada’s legal definition of subversion under paragraph 34(1)(b.1) of the IRPA.
Justice Ngo further affirmed that “mere membership in an organisation linked to terrorism or democratic subversion is enough to trigger inadmissibility under paragraph 34(1)(f) of the IRPA, even without proof of personal involvement.”
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Egharevba’s argument — that political violence was endemic across all Nigerian political parties — was dismissed. The court maintained that even flawed Nigerian elections still constitute a democratic process under Canadian law, and undermining them qualifies as subversion.
This ruling, PulseNets reported, effectively ends Egharevba’s asylum pursuit, with deportation proceedings now expected to follow.
