The All Progressives Congress (APC) has categorically dismissed media reports claiming that a Canadian court declared the party a terrorist organisation.
The clarification was issued in a press statement signed by Felix Morka, National Publicity Secretary, on 15 August 2025 in Abuja.
The statement explained that the reports stem from a judicial decision in the case of Douglas Egharevba vs. the Minister of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness, in which the applicant sought a judicial review of a decision by the Canadian Immigration Appeal Division (IAD).
The IAD had determined that Egharevba was inadmissible in Canada under its Immigration and Refugee Protection Act (IRPA).
According to APC, the June 17, 2025, ruling by Judge Phuong T.V. Ngo dismissed Egharevba’s application for review because he was “a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), an organization engaged in acts of subversion pursuant to paragraph 34(1)(b.1) of the IRPA making him inadmissible in Canada.”
The press statement emphasised that APC’s mention in the court’s decision was limited to background information provided by Egharevba himself.
“The only reference to APC in the entire 16-page decision was in the introductory ‘Background’, Paragraph 4, where the court referenced a ‘Background Declaration Form’ in which the Applicant stated that ‘he was a member of the People’s Democratic Party [PDP] of Nigeria from December 1999 until December 2007, and a member of All Progressives Congress [APC] party of Nigeria from December 2007 until May 2017,’” the statement read.
The party clarified that “APC was not in existence as of 2007. The Party was registered in 2013. The Applicant’s claim of membership of APC as of 2007 is evidently false as he could not have been a member of APC that didn’t exist at the time.”
Morka further stressed that the court never made any determination on terrorism. Quoting the judge directly, the statement noted: “Having found that the IAD’s analysis on subversion was reasonable, this is sufficient to dismiss the application for review. I will therefore refrain from analyzing the IAD’s findings on terrorism.”
The APC statement described claims that the court had labelled the party a terrorist organisation as “patently erroneous, if not mischievous”.
It further warned that any such decision would have been “an unjustifiable overreach, a major breach of fair hearing, and of no extraterritorial applicability or significance.”
The party urged Nigerians and its supporters to disregard the misleading reports, emphasising that “the court did not make such a declaration, and could not have done so as that would be an unjustifiable overreach.”