*Photo: Professor Kehinde Yusuf*
According to Cambridge Dictionary, a labyrinth is “a confusing set of connecting passages or paths in which it is easy to get lost.” It is one “in which it is difficult to find one’s way or to reach the exit,” as Collins Dictionary alternatively defines it.
Nigeria’s main opposition party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), has demonstrated an uncanny flair for walking into legal forms of such labyrinths in the last few years. The onset of the legal conundrums in 2023 featured Dr. Iyorchia Ayu and his suspension as the National Chairman of the PDP. His tenure became controversial because, in 2022, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar was elected as the presidential candidate of the party in a primary election in which at some point the incumbent Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike, had been seen by some as the likely winner.
Since Dr. Ayu came from Northern Nigeria like Alhaji Abubakar and then-incumbent Governor of Sokoto State Aminu Waziri Tambuwal who was the Director-General of the Atiku presidential campaign outfit, some members of the party expected Dr. Ayu to resign to accommodate a Southern Nigerian replacement to broaden regional sense of belonging in the party. However, Dr. Ayu did not resign, and this created agitations for regional equity in the PDP, with Governor Wike being particularly vociferous.
In the face of increasing regional discontent within the party and allegations of misconduct, Dr. Ayu was suspended from the PDP by his political ward executive on 24 March, 2023, and, on 2 June, 2023, a Benue State High Court affirmed the suspension and ruled that he could not continue in office, because his party membership had lapsed due to unpaid dues. Dr. Ayu filed an appeal of the judgement on 27 June, 2023, but withdrew the case on 15 April, 2024. Meanwhile, the National Working Committee of the party had appointed Ambassador Umar Illiya Damagum as the Acting National Chairman since 28 March, 2023.
Moreover, some were of the opinion that since the National Secretary of the party, Senator Samuel Anyanwu, had on 12 April, 2023, gone to contest the governorship primary election of Imo State, he had automatically relinquished his party office. So, on that day, the PDP Board of Trustees (with Senator Adolphus Wabara as Chair) asked Anyanwu to resign as National Secretary.
However, on 13 October, 2023, the national leadership of PDP (led by Ambassador Umar Damagum) and PDP’s former Governor Nyesom Wike, who had been appointed, from the opposition, as the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu into the All Progressives Congress (APC)-led Federal Government, insisted that Anyanwu remained the valid National Secretary, until replaced by a duly constituted national convention.
Meanwhile, the Deputy National Secretary of the party, Setonji Koshoedo, had been appointed as a replacement for Samuel Anyanwu, pending the nomination of Anyanwu’s replacement by the South-East zone of the party to which Anyanwu belonged. That replacement which was made on 20 October, 2023 was Sunday Udeh-Okoye. In response, two of Anyanwu’s supporters approached the court and on 23 November, 2023, a Federal High Court in Abuja granted an order restraining the PDP from removing Anyanwu from office as National Secretary.
Subsequently, two members of PDP challenged Anyanwu’s continuance in office, and ruling was delivered in their favour in a 22 December, 2023 judgement of the High Court of Enugu State and in a 20 December, 2024 judgement of the Court of Appeal in Enugu. However, these judgements of the lower courts were reversed on 21 March, 2025 by the Supreme Court.
Some disaffected powerful forces within the party were also planning to remove Damagum from office as Acting National Chairman. Consequently, he filed a suit on 2 May, 2024, seeking an interim injunction to prevent his removal. As The Cable reported, on 3 May, 2024, Justice Peter Lifu granted the order and declared: “The defendants/respondents are hereby restrained in the interim from appointing, selecting, or nominating any person to replace Amb. Umar Illiya Damagum as National Chairman or Acting National Chairman of the 1st defendant/respondent pending the hearing and determination of the motion on notice already filed, which is herein fixed against the 14th of May, 2024.”
As the court cases continued, some powers-that-be in the PDP did not relent in their efforts to remove both Damagum and Anyanwu from their respective party positions by all means, especially as they had become disfavoured for being close associates of Nyesom Wike. In this regard, Channels TV reported on 11 October, 2024: “The Federal High Court in Abuja has restrained the National Executive Committee (NEC) and Board of Trustees (BoT) of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from removing Umar Damagum as the Acting National Chairman of the party.”
The Nigeria Lawyer of 11 October, 2024 further reported: “Justice Peter Lifu ordered that no person other than Damagum should be recognised as PDP National Chairman until the party’s national convention scheduled for December 2025. … The judge held that in line with Articles 42, 47, and 67 of the PDP constitution, it is only at the national convention of the party that national officers can be elected. According to him, PDP members are bound by the party’s constitution and must always act in line with it.”
The different distracting lawsuits and flexible court judgements made it difficult to know who the legitimate Acting National Chairman and National Secretary were. This uncertainty undermined PDP’s reliability as a platform on which to contest for different positions in the 2027 elections. Different members of the party therefore defected to different political parties.
Moreover, on 14 April, 2025, at the PDP Governors’ Forum meeting held in Ibadan and hosted by the Governor of Oyo State, Seyi Makinde, the governors declared: “The Forum reiterates its position taken in Asaba on the issue of the National Secretary of the party, but in the wake of the Supreme Court judgment, Forum resolved to recommend that the Deputy National Secretary act as National Secretary, pending the nomination and ratification of a Substantive Secretary from the South East Zone and NEC respectively at its next meeting.” This declaration favoured Setonji Koshoedo, but it created the problematic situation in which, in addition to him, Samuel Anyanwu and Sunday Udeh-Okoye were concurrently claiming to be the National Secretary of the party.
The maze of litigation was compounded when it was announced that the national convention of the party would be holding from 15 to 16 November, 2025 in Ibadan. First, fourteen out of the thirty-six PDP states branches had not yet conducted congresses to elect members who would represent them at the scheduled national convention. However, complaints about the denial of voting rights which this would entail were not addressed. Representatives of the affected states therefore went to court to stop the scheduled convention from holding.
Second, the foundation member of PDP and former Jigawa State Governor Alhaji Sule Lamido was prevented, by party officials, from collecting an application form to enable him to contest for the position of National Chairman at the convention. So, he also filed a suit in court to enforce his democratic rights to contest at the impending election. Meanwhile, the Chair of the reconciliation committee of the party, former Senate President Bukola Saraki, had counselled that a Caretaker Committee be put in place to organise a more widely acceptable elective convention at a more auspicious future date. This advice was rebuffed by those holding sway in the party at the time.
On 31 October, 2025, Justice James Omotosho of the Federal High Court, Abuja, delivered a judgement halting the PDP national convention scheduled for 15 to 16 November, 2025 in Ibadan, until due process had been complied with as stipulated by the PDP constitution with respect to state congresses and delegate selection. However, presumably through the influence of the host Governor, Seyi Makinde, a counter interim order was procured on 3 November, 2025. The judgement delivered by Justice A.L. Akintola of the Oyo State High Court in Ibadan granted permission for the national convention to proceed as scheduled and also ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to monitor and observe the convention.
Moreover, on 14 November, 2025, Justice Peter Lifu of the Federal High Court, Abuja, delivered a final ruling that the scheduled PDP convention in Ibadan be suspended until Alhaji Sule Lamido had been given fair opportunities to purchase the application form and contest in the national convention. In spite of this ruling and ostensibly on the strength of Justice Akintola’s earlier interim order, the national convention of the PDP held in Ibadan from 15 to 16 November, 2025. Among other decisions, the convention elected Kabiru Tanimu Turaki (SAN) as the substantive National Chairman of the party. This led to fresh litigations by both the Wike-backed Alhaji Abdulrahman Mohammed and the Makinde-backed Turaki factions of the party.
In the Supreme Court judgement of 30 April, 2026, the Ibadan convention was declared illegal and all decisions taken there were declared null and void, for holding it in spite of two valid final court judgements ordering that it should be postponed. Exploiting the fact that language is by nature flexible and that an expression may legitimately have more than one meaning, the different factions of PDP were subjecting court judgements to parochial interpretations, especially with respect to what constitutes the exclusive internal affairs of parties, and this has deepened the PDP crisis.
Up till now, PDP has not been able to find its way out of the legal labyrinths into which it has walked. In fact, just on 4 June, 2026, some leaders of the Turaki faction, including Board of Trustees Chair Aldophus Wabara, Dr. Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu, Professor Jerry Gana, Chief Olabode George, Hajiya Maryam Ciroma and Dame Esther Uduehi, instituted a court case against INEC demanding the recognition of its interim National Working Committee appointed on 4 May, 2026 and the display of their names on the INEC portal.
In spite of what is publicly known about the origins and development of the PDP chaos and its distracting avalanche of intricate court cases, it seems to have been convenient for some key members of the party, some PDP-sympathisers and some detractors of the APC to attribute the PDP’s problems to the machinations of the ruling party. However, PDP National Leader Nyesom Wike, like PDP South-South Zonal Caretaker Committee Chair Emmanuel Ogidi and PDP chieftain Segun Sowunmi, regards the party’s woes as self-inflicted.
Specifically, in a media parley in Abuja on 24 October, 2025, Wike asked rhetorically: “Is it the APC that’s making you [PDP] to take the wrong decision?” Such wrong decisions have made PDP to lose all of its state governors, many of its Local Government Areas chairpersons and very many of its legislators to other parties.