“Reliefs Nobody Asked For” — Court Of Appeal Faults FHC Judge, Declares Judgment Recognising Abdurahman-Led PDP Caretaker Committee A Nullity

The Court of Appeal in Abuja has faulted a judgment delivered by Justice Uche Ogomoh of the Federal High Court, Ibadan, ruling that the trial judge exceeded her powers by granting reliefs that were never sought by any of the parties in a dispute over the leadership of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), effectively dismantling the legal basis upon which a factional caretaker committee led by Abdurahman Mohammed and Samuel Anyanwu had been recognised as the legitimate leadership of the opposition party.

In a judgment delivered by Justice Uchechukwu Onyemenam and unanimously endorsed by the other members of the three-man panel, Justices Mohammed Mustapha and Okon Abang, the appellate court held that the lower court went beyond the issues before it when it recognised the factional caretaker committee, describing the offending portions of the judgment as “a nullity liable to be set aside ex debito justitiae.”

The ruling marks another significant development in the PDP’s protracted internal leadership crisis and further entrenches the legal consequences of the Supreme Court’s earlier decision nullifying the party’s controversial Ibadan convention of November 15-16, 2025, by confirming that every structure, committee, or leadership organ that derived its authority from that convention is without legal foundation.

The case arose from a judgment delivered on January 30 by Justice Uche Ogomoh of the Federal High Court, Ibadan, which declared the caretaker committee led by Abdurahman Mohammed and Samuel Anyanwu as the legitimate leadership faction of the PDP in the context of the party’s ongoing leadership tussle between rival factions.

However, when the matter reached the Court of Appeal, the appellate court found a fundamental defect in the trial court’s approach: no party before the court had sought the declaration that Justice Ogomoh granted.

“In the instant case, there is clearly a live issue where the trial court went outside the reliefs sought to recognise and uphold a factional caretaker committee,” Justice Onyemenam stated in the lead judgment.

Although the Court of Appeal did not expressly invoke the doctrine of ultra petita, the Latin legal principle that applies where a court grants reliefs not requested by any party to a proceeding, the appellate court’s criticism of the lower court’s actions amounted to a strong application of the doctrine’s underlying rationale.

The principle is a fundamental rule of adjudication: a court is bound by the reliefs sought by the parties before it and cannot, on its own motion, grant declarations or orders that no party has asked for. When a court does so, it acts beyond its jurisdiction, and the resulting judgment is liable to be set aside as a nullity.

The Court of Appeal made clear that this is precisely what happened in the Federal High Court: “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.”

The phrase “ex debito justitiae” means “as a matter of right” or “as a debt of justice,” indicating that the setting aside of such a judgment is not discretionary but is required by law as a matter of fundamental legal principle.

The Court of Appeal’s judgment did not rest solely on the trial court’s procedural overreach. It also addressed the substantive question of whether the PDP leadership structures recognised by Justice Ogomoh had any surviving legal validity, and concluded that they did not.

The appellate court noted that the Supreme Court had already nullified the PDP’s Ibadan convention of November 15-16, 2025, in Appeal No. SC/CV/164/2026 (PDP v. Alhaji Sule Lamido & 4 Others). Since the caretaker committee recognised by the trial court derived its authority from that convention, the legal foundation upon which the recognition rested had been extinguished.

“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 of Appeal held.

The court further explained why it did not order a retrial despite finding that the trial court had exceeded its jurisdiction. The declaratory and injunctive reliefs sought on appeal were tied to the legitimacy of the Ibadan convention, which had already been nullified by the Supreme Court. Ordering a retrial on leadership organs purportedly created or validated by that convention would serve no purpose.

“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,” Justice Onyemenam stated.

The Court of Appeal concluded that the combined effect of its own earlier decision in Appeal No. CA/ABJ/1695/2025 and the Supreme Court’s decision in SC/CV/164/2026 had settled the core issues underlying the appeal, leaving no live controversy between the parties.

“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 court held.

The judgment was unanimously endorsed by Justices Mohammed Mustapha and Okon Abang, who sat with Justice Onyemenam on the three-man panel.

The ruling effectively removes any remaining legal basis for the recognition of the caretaker committee associated with the Abdurahman Mohammed and Samuel Anyanwu faction. Since the Ibadan convention from which their authority derived has been nullified by the Supreme Court, and the Federal High Court judgment that independently recognised them has now been declared a nullity by the Court of Appeal, the faction has no subsisting court order or judicial recognition to rely upon.

The judgment reinforces the cascading legal consequences of the Supreme Court’s decision on the Ibadan convention. The apex court’s ruling did not merely void the convention itself; it destroyed the legal foundation of every decision, election, appointment, and leadership structure that was produced by or dependent on that convention. Every “superstructure” built upon the null convention, as the Court of Appeal described it, falls with it.

For the PDP, the ruling narrows the legal options available to the factions that had relied on the Ibadan convention to establish their claim to the party’s leadership. Any attempt to validate leadership structures through courts that have already had the underlying convention nullified by the Supreme Court will face the same obstacle: a court cannot be asked to recognise what the Supreme Court has already declared does not exist.

The judgment also carries significance beyond the PDP’s internal affairs. The Court of Appeal’s criticism of Justice Ogomoh for granting reliefs that no party sought reinforces a principle that has become increasingly relevant in Nigeria’s politically charged litigation environment: courts must decide only what the parties ask them to decide.

In recent years, concerns have been raised about courts issuing orders, declarations, or injunctions that go beyond the reliefs sought by litigants, sometimes in ways that appear to advance political objectives or factional interests that were not part of the formal proceedings. The Court of Appeal’s description of such conduct as producing “a nullity liable to be set aside ex debito justitiae” sends a clear signal that appellate courts will not tolerate judicial overreach, regardless of the political context in which it occurs.

The warning that a lower court cannot “purport to sit in judgment over the Supreme Court” is equally significant, particularly in the current environment where multiple courts have been issuing conflicting orders on politically sensitive matters. The hierarchy of courts exists for a reason: once the Supreme Court has pronounced on an issue, that pronouncement binds every court below it, and no lower court can revisit, relitigate, or effectively reverse the apex court’s decision.

The judgment was delivered at the Court of Appeal, Abuja.

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