Appeal Court Nullifies Recognition Of Wike-Backed PDP Caretaker Committee

The Court of Appeal in Abuja has overturned portions of a Federal High Court ruling that recognised a factional caretaker committee within the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), declaring that the lower court granted orders that were neither sought nor canvassed by the parties involved in the suit.

In a judgment delivered by Justice Uchechukwu Onyemenam on Wednesday, 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 making pronouncements on issues that were not before it in the ongoing leadership dispute rocking the PDP.

Justice Uche Agomoh had, on January 30, recognised the caretaker committee led by Abdurahman Mohammed and the party’s National Secretary, Samuel Anyanwu, as the legitimate leadership structure of the party. However, the Court of Appeal ruled that no party to the case had requested such a declaration, making the decision legally unsustainable.

Justice Onyemenam stated that the trial court ventured beyond the reliefs sought by litigants when it affirmed the legitimacy of the factional committee.

“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,” the appellate judge held.

The court further ruled that the legal basis for the Federal High Court’s decision had already been invalidated by an earlier Supreme Court judgment which nullified the PDP’s Ibadan National Convention held on November 15 and 16, 2025.

According to the appellate court, any leadership organ, committee or structure established or validated through the convention automatically lost its legal standing following the apex court’s decision.

“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 stated.

The court observed that, under different circumstances, it might have considered ordering a retrial on issues arising from the leadership structures produced by the convention. However, it held that such a move would be unnecessary since the Supreme Court had already conclusively settled the substantive issues.

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 also held that there was no longer any live controversy requiring judicial determination, noting that previous decisions of both the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court had already resolved the fundamental questions underpinning the appeal.

The judgment was unanimously endorsed by the other members of the three-man panel, Justices Mohammed Mustapha and Okon Abang.

The ruling effectively strips the Abdurahman Mohammed-led factional caretaker committee of the judicial recognition earlier granted by the Federal High Court, marking another significant development in the prolonged leadership battle within the PDP and further reshaping the legal landscape of the party’s internal crisis.