Former Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission, Chidi Odinkalu, has reacted to the defection of Minority Leader of the House of Representatives, Kingsley Chinda, from the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, to the All Progressives Congress, APC.

Odinkalu, in a post on X on Tuesday, described the development as “organized crime,” insisting that no court ruling could justify the circumstances surrounding Chinda’s move to the ruling party.

His reaction comes amid controversy surrounding the announcement by Speaker of the House of Representatives, Tajudeen Abbas, that Chinda had defected from the PDP to the APC.

The Speaker, during plenary on Tuesday, read a letter notifying the House of Chinda’s defection.
However, the letter was dated April 23, 2026.

The development comes after Chinda had already emerged as the APC governorship candidate in Rivers State ahead of the 2027 election.

Following the announcement of his defection, Chinda resigned his position as Minority Leader of the House.

Reacting, Odinkalu noted that Chinda was selected as the APC governorship candidate for Rivers State while he was still serving as Minority Leader on the platform of the PDP.

According to him, efforts may be made to legitimise the situation through the courts, but he maintained that the circumstances surrounding the defection could not be justified.

DAILY POST reports that Chinda is currently facing a lawsuit over allegations that his defection from the PDP to the APC did not follow due process.

The House of Representatives is expected to elect a new Minority Leader following his resignation.

He wrote: “Today, the speaker of @HouseNGR has announced the defection of my good friend, @OKChinda, from @OfficialPDPNig to @OfficialAPCNg.

“It is claimed he also now ceases to be #MinorityLeader of the House. They back-dated the letter of notification to 23 April.

“Last month, while still the Minority Leader of the House, Chinda was selected to be the candidate of the ruling @OfficialAPCNg for governorship of Rivers State in #NigeriaDecides2027.

“I am sure they have lined up their #FullyOwned judges to make this look kosher with a suitable court order. But no amount of #CourtWashing can clean this up. It is #OrganizedCrime. Period!”

Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State on Tuesday expressed distress over the recent kidnapping of students and teachers in Oriire Local Government Area of the state.

Makinde noted that this is not the time to cast blames on the governor of the state or President Bola Tinubu, stressing that Nigerians should unite in the fight against insecurity.

The governor spoke during a peaceful protest led by the Nigeria Union of Teachers, NUT, the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, the Trade Union Congress, TUC, and the National Association of Nigerian Students, NANS, at the his office in Ibadan.

“This is a time of national distress. It is not the time to trade blames. It is not the time to play politics. I am personally distressed. My own father was a primary school teacher. He actually taught at Awole Dada, less than 15 kilometres away from where this incident happened. My father was there in 1959 and 1960. If something like this had happened to him, maybe I wouldn’t even have been born,” he said.

The governor insisted that the tragedy should not become a platform for political finger-pointing, stressing that the challenge of insecurity requires a united response.

“This is not the time for us to say it is the President that should have handled this, or it is the Governor, or the local government. This is a time to pull together as one,” he said.

The Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, has confirmed that confidential voter information relating to Nollywood actor Emeka Ike, a House of Representatives aspirant of the National Democratic Coalition, NDC, was accessed using valid staff credentials and subsequently released without authorization.

INEC disclosed this in a statement issued on Tuesday by the National Commissioner and Chairman of the Information and Voter Education Committee, Mohammed Kudu Haruna.

The development followed allegations of unauthorized access to the Commission’s Continuous Voter Registration, CVR, database involving Lere Olayinka, media aide to the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, FCT, Nyesom Wike.

The controversy erupted after voter registration details belonging to Ike surfaced online shortly after he announced plans to contest a House of Representatives seat in the FCT.

The records, shared by Olayinka, were alleged to have originated from INEC’s restricted administrative portal.

The Commission said it immediately commenced an investigation after reports emerged on social media and in sections of the media alleging that information on a candidate had been obtained from its database and made public.

According to INEC, preliminary findings showed that there was no external breach of its CVR database, no hacking incident and no unauthorized access to its ICT infrastructure.

Rather, the Commission said the information was accessed through valid user credentials assigned to personnel involved in the ongoing nationwide CVR exercise.

“The information in question was accessed through valid user credentials assigned to personnel participating in the ongoing CVR exercise but released without authority,” the statement said.

INEC explained that registration officers participating in the CVR exercise were granted controlled access to specific components of the system to enable them register new voters, process transfer requests and update voter records where necessary.

The Commission said an audit trail from its preliminary investigation enabled it to identify the user account through which the information was accessed.

It added that relevant personnel had been questioned while all units connected to the incident were cooperating with the investigation.

INEC said it was examining the technical, administrative and operational circumstances surrounding the incident to establish responsibility and determine whether any internal access-control protocols were breached.

Meanwhile, INEC disclosed that the Department of State Services, DSS, has commenced an independent investigation into the matter.