The Peoples Democratic Party aligned with Oyo State Governor Seyi Makinde has fixed an emergency meeting of its National Executive Committee for Monday after a Supreme Court ruling dismantled the party’s National Working Committee. The move follows a fresh power struggle inside the opposition party over who now controls its structure.
Adolphus Wabara said the Board of Trustees immediately assumed administrative leadership after the judgment on Thursday, April 30, 2026, which he said stripped the PDP of a National Working Committee and annulled the 2025 National Convention that produced the Kabiru Turaki-led team. Speaking at the opening of the party’s 84th BoT meeting in Abuja on Sunday, Wabara said the ruling also upheld the suspension of key conveners of the March 29–30 contentious convention in Abuja. He added that the board moved in line with the party constitution amended in 2017.
Wabara’s reading of the court’s decision puts the party on a collision course with another camp that says no vacuum exists. He said the messages backing the board’s move showed that Nigerians remained with the PDP and would stiffen its push to reclaim the country from the APC in the 2027 general elections. The emergency NEC meeting for Monday now becomes the next test of whether the party can settle on one chain of command before the dispute hardens further.
That fight matters because the same ruling has been described in completely different terms by senior party figures. Haruna Mohammed Jagunda said the judgment only nullified what he called the illegal Ibadan convention and argued that the party’s leadership remains intact, lawful and fully operational under Alhaji Abdulrahman Mohammed as national chairman and Mr. Samuel Anyanwu as national secretary. Chief Kefas Wungak Ropshik also said the court invalidated the Ibadan convention and recognized the Abdulrahman-led leadership.
The split leaves the PDP with competing interpretations of the same Supreme Court ruling, a familiar weakness at a moment when the party is trying to present itself as a credible challenger ahead of 2027. Wabara, meanwhile, tied the board’s claim to the judgment and the later emergency meeting, while the other camp insists the party never lost its leadership in the first place. Monday’s NEC session will show whether the PDP can reconcile those positions or simply deepen the fracture. In Abuja, the battle is no longer over the convention alone. It is over who gets to speak for the party now.
