Oyo Court Validates PDP’s 2025 Ibadan Convention
The Oyo State High Court sitting in Ibadan has delivered a comprehensive judgment affirming the legality of the Peoples Democratic Party’s 2025 elective national convention, which produced Dr. Kabiru Turaki as the party’s substantive National Chairman, resolving a significant legal dispute over the legitimacy of the exercise.
Justice Ladiran Akintola, delivering the ruling on Friday, upheld the convention in its entirety, holding that it was conducted in full compliance with the constitutional and statutory provisions governing internal party elections in Nigeria. All 13 reliefs sought by the claimant, Folahan Malomo Adelabi, were granted by the court in what amounts to a sweeping legal endorsement of the Ibadan convention and its outcomes.
The suit, filed under Suit No. I/1336/2025 through an amended originating summons prepared by Misibau Adetunmbi (SAN), centred on a fundamental question of party governance: whether the defendants had any legal basis to prevent or truncate the elective national convention scheduled for November 15 and 16, 2025 in Ibadan, in light of the express provisions of the PDP’s own Constitution and the 1999 Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
The court answered that question decisively in the negative.
Justice Akintola held that, by virtue of Section 40 of the 1999 Constitution, the defendants were under a binding obligation to protect the claimant’s right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association, and that any failure to conduct the national convention would have constituted a clear violation of that constitutional right. In grounding the judgment in Section 40, the court reinforced the principle that internal party democracy is not merely a procedural nicety but a constitutionally protected right enforceable by any eligible party member.
The judgment drew extensively on Articles 33(7), 47(1) and (2) of the PDP Constitution as amended in 2017, alongside Section 223(2)(a) of the 1999 Constitution as amended, to establish the framework within which the court evaluated the conduct of the convention. Together, these provisions require political parties to hold democratic elections for their principal national officers at prescribed intervals, and the court found that the party had a non-negotiable obligation to comply.
On the question of compliance with statutory notice requirements, the court ruled that, pursuant to Sections 223(1)(a) and 223(2)(a) of the Constitution, as well as Sections 82(1) and (2)(a) of the Electoral Act 2022, the notice issued to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) on August 29, 2025, satisfied all necessary modalities for the exercise. Critically, Justice Akintola held that the validity of the convention was not contingent on whether INEC physically monitored the proceedings, a ruling that addresses one of the recurring points of contention in disputes over party elections in Nigeria.
The court went further, declaring that the PDP was bound by the approved guidelines for party congresses and the national convention, which became effective on May 1, 2024, and were adopted by the party’s National Executive Committee. Having allowed the nomination period to lapse without obstruction, the defendants were held to be under a binding obligation to convene the convention as scheduled. The court ruled that once convened, the convention would be deemed properly constituted and its outcome binding on all relevant authorities and persons.
In a declaration of particular consequence, Justice Akintola held that the National Convention conducted on November 15 and 16, 2025, pursuant to court orders made on November 3 and renewed on November 14, was legal and valid in its entirety. Because INEC was a party to the proceedings at the time those interim orders were made and renewed, the court ruled that the commission is obliged to give effect to the decisions of the convention pending any contrary pronouncement from a higher court. The practical effect of this ruling is that INEC has no legal basis to refuse recognition of Turaki’s emergence as National Chairman or to treat the convention’s outcomes as contested pending a superior court’s intervention.
The court found that the convention, organised by the recognised leadership of the party, satisfied all legal requirements under the Constitution and the Electoral Act, and identified no breach of due process or statutory non-compliance in how it was conducted.
Separately within the same proceedings, Justice Akintola dismissed a Motion on Notice filed by Sunday Ibrahim (SAN) on behalf of Austin Nwachukwu and two others, which had sought a stay of proceedings and a suspension of the ruling. The court found the applications without merit and struck them out. An earlier bid by Ibrahim to have his clients joined as parties to the suit was also rejected, with the court describing the joinder application as unsubstantiated.
The judgment arrives at a moment when the PDP is navigating one of the most turbulent internal crises in its history, with competing factions contesting the direction of the party’s national leadership ahead of the 2027 general elections. The party, founded in 1998 and regarded as one of Nigeria’s largest opposition platforms, governed the country at the federal level from 1999 to 2015 before losing power to the All Progressives Congress (APC) under President Muhammadu Buhari. Since that defeat, the PDP has struggled with recurring internal divisions, including a factional crisis in 2016 that briefly produced parallel national executives, and the high-profile defection of its 2019 presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, from intra-party disputes. The party’s post-2023 trajectory has been shaped in large part by the aftermath of Atiku’s loss to President Bola Tinubu and the subsequent question of who controls its national organs.
The convention that produced Turaki emerged in that contested atmosphere, making the judicial endorsement from Ibadan a politically significant development beyond its immediate legal implications.
The ruling does not foreclose appeals, and parties dissatisfied with the judgment retain the right to approach higher courts. The court was explicit in stating that its orders on INEC remain operative pending any contrary pronouncement from a superior tribunal, language that leaves open the possibility of further litigation. However, for now, the Ibadan court has placed the weight of judicial authority firmly behind the November 2025 convention and the leadership it produced.