The Court of Appeal in Abuja has criticized Justice Uche Agomoh of the Federal High Court in Ibadan for awarding remedies that were not requested by any party in a dispute involving the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
In a judgment delivered by Justice Uchechukwu Onyemenam, the appellate court determined that the trial judge exceeded the scope of the reliefs sought when she acknowledged a factional caretaker committee in the PDP leadership crisis.
The controversy originated from a judgment issued by Justice Agomoh on January 30, where she declared that the PDP caretaker committee led by Abdurahman Mohammed and Samuel Anyanwu represented the legitimate faction of the party. The Court of Appeal noted that none of the parties had requested such a declaration.
“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,” Onyemenam stated.
The appellate court further remarked that if the declaratory and injunctive reliefs pursued on appeal had not been linked to the legitimacy of the Ibadan convention—already nullified by the Supreme Court—it would have mandated a retrial concerning the leadership organs purportedly created or validated by that 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 declared that the legal foundation of the Anyanwu-led caretaker committee, as recognized by the trial court, had been extinguished by the Supreme Court’s judgment. It added that revisiting the matter would serve no practical legal purpose.
The Court of Appeal refrained from explicitly labeling the trial court’s action as ultra petita, a legal doctrine referring to situations where a court grants relief beyond what was sought by the parties. 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.
“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, the other members of the three-member panel.
The decision effectively nullifies the basis upon which the Federal High Court recognized the caretaker committee linked to the Abdurahman Mohammed faction of the PDP.
