A Kaduna State High Court has ordered the Commissioner of Police, Kaduna State Command, to pay N15 million in damages for unlawfully disrupting political meetings organised by the African Democratic Congress (ADC) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP).
Delivering judgment on Wednesday, Justice Murtala Zubairu held that the police violated the parties’ fundamental rights to peaceful assembly and association guaranteed under Section 40 of the 1999 Constitution (as amended).
The court also issued a perpetual injunction restraining the police commissioner, his officers, and agents from interfering with or disrupting lawful political gatherings in the state.
Justice Zubairu ruled that the police acted outside their statutory powers when they disrupted two separate meetings involving former Kaduna State Governor, Mallam Nasir El-Rufai, and chieftains of the ADC and SDP, held on August 30 and September 4, 2025.
According to the judgment, the first meeting was violently broken up by suspected thugs in the presence of police personnel, while the second was halted by officers acting on an ex parte order secured by the police.
The police had earlier filed a suit marked KDH/KAD/NPD/1315/2025, seeking to suspend all political gatherings in the state pending investigations into alleged threats of violence.
Justice Zubairu, however, dismissed the suit as “incompetent, politically motivated, and an abuse of the court process,” ruling that the police had no constitutional authority to suspend the fundamental rights of citizens based on speculative intelligence.
“The duty of the police is to provide security for peaceful assemblies, not to prohibit them pre-emptively,” the judge stated.
He declared the ex parte injunction obtained by the police invalid for procedural irregularities and lack of merit.
The court consequently awarded N15 million in damages to the applicants — N5 million each for the unlawful suspension of their meetings, the wrongful injunction, and the failure to investigate the attack of August 30.
Justice Zubairu further directed the Commissioner of Police to conduct a thorough investigation into the incident and submit a report to the Kaduna State Attorney-General within 60 days.
He cautioned that selective enforcement of the law or suppression of political opposition by security agencies undermines democracy and erodes public trust.