APPEAL COURT NULLIFIES FEDERAL HIGH COURT RULING RECOGNISING PDP CARETAKER COMMITTEE
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By Aishat Momoh. O.
The Court of Appeal in Abuja has set aside major portions of a Federal High Court judgment that recognised a factional caretaker committee in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), ruling that the lower court granted reliefs that were never requested by any of the parties involved.
In a judgment delivered on Wednesday by Justice Uchechukwu Onyemenam, the appellate court held that the Federal High Court in Ibadan exceeded its jurisdiction by making declarations outside the issues presented before it in the ongoing PDP leadership dispute.
Justice Uche Agomoh of the Federal High Court had, in a judgment delivered on January 30, recognised the caretaker committee led by Abdurahman Mohammed and Samuel Anyanwu as the legitimate leadership structure of the party.
However, the Court of Appeal ruled that none of the litigants had specifically sought such recognition.
“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 held that the legal basis for the Federal High Court’s decision had already been invalidated by an earlier Supreme Court judgment that nullified the PDP’s Ibadan Convention held on November 15 and 16, 2025.
According to the court, any leadership arrangement, committee or party structure that emerged from or was validated by the convention could no longer stand in law.
“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 may have considered ordering a retrial on issues surrounding the party’s leadership organs but concluded that doing so would serve no legal purpose since the substantive matters had already been settled by superior courts.
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.”
It added that directing a retrial would amount to inviting the lower court to revisit issues already conclusively determined by the Supreme Court.
The Court of Appeal also held that there was no longer any live controversy between the parties because the core legal issues had been resolved by binding judicial decisions.
Justice Onyemenam’s ruling received unanimous support from the other members of the three-man panel, Justices Mohammed Mustapha and Okon Abang.
The decision effectively removes the legal basis upon which the Federal High Court recognised the caretaker committee linked to the Abdurahman Mohammed faction, marking another major development in the prolonged PDP leadership crisis.
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