The Court of Appeal sitting in Abuja has overturned portions of a judgment of the Federal High Court that recognised a factional caretaker committee within the Peoples Democratic Party, ruling that the lower court granted reliefs that were not sought by any of the parties involved in the case.
In a judgment delivered on Wednesday by Justice Uchechukwu Onyemenam, a certified true copy of which was obtained on Friday, the appellate court held that the Federal High Court in Ibadan exceeded its jurisdiction by determining issues that were not presented before it in the dispute arising from the PDP leadership crisis.
Justice Uche Agomoh of the Federal High Court had, on January 30, recognised the caretaker committee led by Abdurahman Mohammed and Samuel Anyanwu as the legitimate leadership faction of the opposition party.
However, the Court of Appeal found that none of the litigants requested such a declaration from the court.
“In the instant case, there is clearly a live issue where the trial court went outside the reliefs sought to recognise and uphold a factional caretaker committee,” Justice Onyemenam stated.
The appellate court further ruled that the basis upon which the Federal High Court validated the committee no longer existed, following a Supreme Court judgment that nullified the PDP’s Ibadan Convention held on November 15 and 16, 2025.
According to the court, any leadership body, committee or organ that emerged from, or was validated by, the convention could not stand after the apex court invalidated the exercise.
“Once the Convention itself has been pronounced null, void and of no effect by the Supreme Court, any superstructure erected upon it is necessarily without legal foundation,” the judgment held.
The court observed that it might have considered ordering a retrial on issues relating to the leadership structures that emerged from the convention if not for the Supreme Court’s decision on the validity of the exercise.
It noted, however, that such a move would be unnecessary because the substantive matters had already been conclusively settled.
Part of the judgment read, “This Court would be driven to the conclusion that the offending portions of the judgment, and indeed the judgment as a whole insofar as the excess permeates the decision, are a nullity and liable to be set aside ex debito justitiae.
“A direction to the trial court to retry an issue that has been settled at the apex level would, in effect, invite it either to repeat what has already been decided or to purport to sit in judgment over the Supreme Court, both of which the law forbids.”
The appellate court further held that no live dispute remained between the parties, citing binding decisions of both the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court that had resolved the fundamental issues behind the appeal.
Justice Onyemenam’s decision received the unanimous backing of the other members of the three-man panel, Justices Mohammed Mustapha and Okon Abang.
The ruling effectively removes the legal foundation for the recognition of the caretaker committee linked to the Abdurahman Mohammed faction that is loyal to Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Minister, Nyesom Wike and represents another significant development in the prolonged leadership tussle within the PDP.
