The Court of Appeal in Abuja, on Friday, nullified the legal foundation upon which Wike’s factional caretaker committee of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) was recognized and faulted a Federal High Court judge in Ibadan for granting reliefs that were never sought by any of the parties in the suit.
In a judgment delivered by Justice Uchechukwu Onyemenam, the appellate court held that Justice Uche Agomoh of the Federal High Court, Ibadan, exceeded the scope of the case before her when she recognized the Wike factional caretaker committee led by Abdurahman Mohammed and Samuel Anyanwu during the PDP’s leadership dispute.
The appellate court ruled that none of the parties had requested such a declaration, making the trial court’s decision legally unsustainable.
The dispute arose from Justice Agomoh’s January 30 judgment in which she declared the Wike factional Mohammed-Anyanwu caretaker committee the legitimate leadership faction of the PDP.
Delivering the lead judgment, Justice Onyemenam stated: “In the instant case, there is clearly a live issue where the trial court went outside the reliefs sought to recognize and uphold a factional caretaker committee.”
The Court of Appeal further held that the legal basis for the committee recognized by the lower court had already been extinguished by decisions of both the Court of Appeal and the Supreme Court, which nullified the PDP’s Ibadan Convention of November 15–16, 2025.
According to the court, any structure or organ deriving its authority from the invalidated convention could not 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 court held.
The appellate court noted that although the circumstances could have warranted a retrial on issues relating to leadership organs purportedly created by the convention, such an order would serve no legal purpose since the convention itself had already been struck down by the apex court.
The court observed that directing the trial court to revisit the matter would amount to asking it to reconsider issues already settled by the Supreme Court.
Part of the judgment reads: “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.
“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.”
While the Court of Appeal did not expressly invoke the legal doctrine of ultra petita, which applies when a court grants reliefs beyond those sought by litigants, it made clear that the trial court had ventured outside the issues submitted for determination.
The judgment was unanimously supported by Justices Mohammed Mustapha and Okon Abang, who sat on the three-member panel.
The decision effectively overturns the recognition granted by the Federal High Court to the Abdurahman Mohammed-led caretaker committee of the Wike faction and reinforces the legal consequences of the Supreme Court’s nullification of the Ibadan convention.
