The Peoples Democratic Party Board of Trustees (BoT) said it disassociates from a reconciliation committee report circulating in parts of the media and insisted the document does not represent the Board’s official position.
Senator Adolphus Wabara, chairman of the BoT moved to draw a line in the sand in a terse press statement dated 14 November 2025.
The BoT added that the report was never considered or adopted and therefore cannot stand as BoT policy.
Wabara went further. He reaffirmed the BoT’s unequivocal endorsement of the elective national convention scheduled for 15 and 16 November 2025 in Ibadan and rejected any proposal for a caretaker committee to run the party.
The BoT framed its position as being guided by a recent Supreme Court ruling that circumscribes judicial interference in internal party matters and upholds party supremacy over its own organisational decisions.
Delegates from across the federation were reported to be arriving in Ibadan as preparations accelerated.
The BoT statement must be read against a combustible political backdrop. Senior figures inside the PDP have publicly canvassed a pause for a caretaker arrangement, arguing it would be the least risky way to manage factional rifts ahead of leadership elections.
Former Senate President Bukola Saraki and other voices urged suspension of the convention in favour of a caretaker committee to calm tensions and produce a consensual leadership slate. Those calls have been explicit and widely reported.
Wabara’s appeal to the Supreme Court precedent is not rhetorical flourish. In March 2025 the apex court in a high profile judgment set a clear marker on the limits of judicial intrusion into internal party disputes.
The ruling, handed down in the Anyanwu appeal, overturned lower court orders and re-emphasised that political parties enjoy latitude to manage their affairs without routine judicial substitution.
Legal analysts have since argued that the judgment strengthened the argument for internal resolution mechanisms rather than external court remedies.
Yet, precedent does not guarantee calm. The PDP has on past occasions resorted to caretaker committees at state level when internal breakdowns threatened organisational continuity.
The party’s own National Working Committee has in recent months approved caretaker arrangements for some state chapters, a reminder that the idea is not alien to PDP practice.
That ambivalence explains why the BoT felt compelled to repudiate any report it judged premature or unauthorised.
Fact check. The BoT’s denial is a statement of organisational fact. Whether the disputed reconciliation report carries support among influential delegates or factional leaders is another question and one that will determine whether the Ibadan convention proceeds as the BoT intends or is derailed by court orders or parallel gatherings.
Political history teaches that conventions held under acute factional stress risk producing contested outcomes that fuel litigation and defections. The coming 48 hours will test the robustness of the PDP’s claim to settle its own house.
Additional report by Osaigbovo Okungbowa, Senior Political Correspondent.
