\n\n
The Court of Appeal in Abuja has set aside portions of a Federal High Court judgment that recognised a factional caretaker committee within the Peoples Democratic Party, ruling that the lower court exceeded its powers by granting reliefs that were never requested by any of the parties involved in the case. The decision, delivered by Justice Uchechukwu Onyemenam and unanimously supported by Justices Mohammed Mustapha and Okon Abang, marks another major twist in the prolonged leadership crisis rocking Nigeria’s main opposition party.
According to the appellate court, the Federal High Court in Ibadan had wrongly recognised the caretaker committee led by Abdurahman Mohammed and Samuel Anyanwu despite the fact that no litigant specifically sought such a declaration. Justice Onyemenam held that a court is bound to determine only the issues placed before it and cannot create or grant remedies outside the claims presented by the parties. The judgment further stated that the legal basis for recognising the committee had already been destroyed by an earlier Supreme Court ruling that nullified the PDP’s controversial Ibadan National Convention held in November 2025.
The Court of Appeal also observed that although a retrial might ordinarily have been considered, such a move would serve no legal purpose because the Supreme Court had already conclusively settled the substantive issues surrounding the convention and the leadership structures that emerged from it. The panel held that once the apex court declared the convention null and void, every committee, organ, or authority purportedly created through that process automatically lost its legal foundation. As a result, the appellate court ruled that the offending portions of the Federal High Court judgment were themselves a nullity and should be set aside.
The ruling is expected to deepen the ongoing struggle for control of the PDP as various factions continue to interpret recent court decisions in different ways. Following the Supreme Court’s earlier judgment, the party’s Board of Trustees announced that it had temporarily assumed responsibility for the party’s national leadership pending the constitution of an interim structure. Political observers believe the latest Court of Appeal decision could further reshape the PDP’s internal dynamics as the opposition party works to resolve its leadership disputes ahead of the 2027 general elections.
