The Court of Appeal in Abuja has voided the recognition of a factional caretaker committee in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) linked to Federal Capital Territory Minister Nyesom Wike, ruling that the Federal High Court exceeded its powers by granting reliefs that were never sought by any of the parties before it.
In a unanimous judgment delivered by Justice Uchechukwu Onyemenam and endorsed by Justices Mohammed Mustapha and Okon Abang, the appellate court set aside key portions of the January 30 judgment of the Federal High Court in Ibadan.
The lower court, presided over by Justice Uche Agomoh, had recognised the caretaker committee led by Abdurahman Mohammed and Samuel Anyanwu as the legitimate leadership faction of the PDP amid the party's protracted leadership crisis.
However, the Court of Appeal held that the trial court ventured beyond the issues submitted for determination.
“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 legal foundation upon which the Federal High Court based its decision had already been invalidated by a Supreme Court judgment that nullified the PDP's Ibadan Convention held on November 15 and 16, 2025.
According to the court, any committee, leadership structure or organ that emerged from the convention could not survive after the apex court declared the exercise null and void.
“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 read.
The court noted that under different circumstances it might have considered ordering a retrial on issues relating to the leadership structures that emerged from the convention. However, it held that such a move would serve no useful legal purpose because the substantive questions had already been conclusively settled by the Supreme Court.
Part of the judgment stated: “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.”
The court added that sending the matter back for retrial would effectively require a lower court to revisit issues already determined by the country's highest court.
“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 judgment said.
The appellate court also found that there was no longer any live dispute between the parties, given the binding decisions of both the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court on the core issues underlying the case.
The ruling effectively removes the legal basis upon which the Federal High Court recognised the Abdurahman Mohammed-led caretaker committee, marking another significant development in the PDP's leadership dispute.
