Appeal Court Faults Federal High Court Over PDP Leadership Ruling

The Court of Appeal in Abuja has faulted Justice Uche Agomoh of the Federal High Court, Ibadan, for granting reliefs that were not sought by any of the parties in a dispute involving the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

In a judgment delivered by Justice Uchechukwu Onyemenam, the appellate court held that the trial judge exceeded the reliefs before her when she recognised a factional caretaker committee in the PDP leadership crisis.

The dispute arose from a judgment delivered by Justice Agomoh on January 30, which declared the PDP caretaker committee led by Abdurahman Mohammed and Samuel Anyanwu as the legitimate faction of the party.

However, the Court of Appeal held that none of the parties before the trial court had sought such a declaration.

“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 noted that if the declaratory and injunctive reliefs sought on appeal had not been linked to the legitimacy of the Ibadan convention already nullified by the Supreme Court, it would have ordered a retrial on the leadership organs purportedly created or validated by the convention.

“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 court held.

The court added that the legal basis of the Anyanwu-led caretaker committee recognised by the trial court had been extinguished by the Supreme Court’s decision, making any further consideration of the issue unnecessary.

Although the Court of Appeal did not expressly describe the trial court’s action as ultra petita—a legal principle that applies when a court grants relief beyond what parties requested—it held that the offending portions of the judgment could not stand.

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.

“On the merits, I hold that, by reason of the binding decisions of this Court in Appeal No. CA/ABJ/1695/2025 and of the Supreme Court in Appeal No. SC/CV/164/2026, which nullified the Ibadan Convention of 15th–16th November 2025 and settled the core issues underlying this appeal, there is no longer any live controversy between the parties.”

The judgment was supported by Justices Mohammed Mustapha and Okon Abang, who were members of the three-man panel.

The ruling effectively nullifies the basis upon which the Federal High Court recognised the caretaker committee linked to the Abdurahman Mohammed faction of the PDP.