Crisis Deepens as Olayinka Taunts Makinde After S’Court Ruling

2027 Election Watch, Politics

PDP Crisis Deepens as Olayinka Taunts Makinde After S’Court Ruling

The PDP’s internal war has now spilled beyond courtrooms into a brutal contest over who controls the party, who speaks for it, and who gets to define the meaning of the Supreme Court’s ruling. In a blistering response, Olalere Olayinka mocked the Seyi Makinde camp as “products of his Amala Convention” and insisted the apex…

Atlantic Post

May 1, 2026

4–6 minutes

Nigerian Politics, Nyesom Wike, PDP Crisis, Samuel Anyanwu, Seyi Makinde, Supreme Court Ruling

The Peoples Democratic Party has entered another combustible phase of its long-running internal war, with the latest battle now revolving around how to read the Supreme Court’s judgment and who, if anyone, can legitimately claim the party’s national leadership. Reports on Thursday and Friday showed that the apex court’s ruling on the PDP’s Ibadan convention has become the fresh weapon in a succession war that is now being fought through press statements, legal interpretations and public taunts. The court had earlier reserved judgment on the appeal over the nullified convention before delivering its decision on Thursday, and the aftermath has triggered sharply conflicting claims from rival blocs within the party.

At the centre of the new verbal offensive is Olalere Olayinka, spokesman to the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, who fired a blistering statement aimed at Governor Seyi Makinde and the faction associated with the Ibadan convention. In the post, Olayinka mocked the Makinde camp as the “products of his Amala Convention” and said it had been “confined to the dustbin of history” by the Supreme Court. He also told the rival bloc to “continue living in their fool’s paradise” if that was the interpretation they preferred, while insisting that those “deceiving themselves” were only prolonging an illusion.

The key political point in Olayinka’s remarks is his insistence that the Supreme Court made no pronouncement on any suspension and no pronouncement on the Abdulrahman Mohammed led National Working Committee. That is the central plank of the Wike camp’s response to the ruling. The faction says the court simply did not do what the Makinde aligned bloc claims it did, and that the judgment cannot be stretched into a legal verdict that removes Abdulrahman Mohammed and Samuel Anyanwu from office. Punch reported that the Wike backed PDP immediately dismissed claims of a leadership vacuum and said Abdulrahman Mohammed and Samuel Anyanwu remain in charge.

But that interpretation is being flatly rejected by the opposite camp, which has seized on the same ruling to argue that the party’s internal structure has shifted. Premium Times reported that Adolphus Wabara’s Board of Trustees based its takeover claim on what it described as the Supreme Court panel’s unanimous ruling upholding the suspension of Samuel Anyanwu, Umar Bature and Kamaldeen Ajibade. Tribune similarly reported that the Abdulrahman Mohammed leadership warned against what it called “false narratives” and argued that Wabara had no constitutional power to assume the functions of the National Working Committee. In short, both camps are reading the same judgment as if it were two different verdicts.

That clash matters because the PDP crisis is no longer a mere family quarrel. It is now a struggle for the power to recognise officers, control the national secretariat, issue party authority and, by extension, determine who can speak for the party ahead of the 2027 election cycle. Wabara announced that the BoT had assumed leadership of the party to prevent what he called a vacuum and said the body would convene an emergency NEC meeting to appoint a caretaker committee. The Wike camp, however, insists there is no vacuum at all and that any attempt to install an interim structure is illegitimate.

The legal backdrop makes the dispute even more explosive. On 22 April 2026, Punch reported that the FCT High Court had issued a Form 48 notice against Samuel Anyanwu and the INEC Chairman over alleged disobedience of a judgment delivered on 12 January 2026 that dismissed Anyanwu’s suit challenging his expulsion from the PDP. The paper also reported that Anyanwu later appealed the decision, while the wider party battle continued to rage around the question of who had the authority to act for the PDP at the national level. That earlier litigation is important because it shows the present crisis did not begin with the Supreme Court ruling. It had already been simmering through multiple courts and multiple factions for months.

This is why Olayinka’s language is not just political theatre. It is a communications assault designed to fix the public narrative before the legal dust settles. By ridiculing the Makinde bloc, dismissing the BoT’s claim to authority and urging rivals to seek nomination forms from Wabara if they believe he now leads the party, the Wike camp is trying to frame the battle as one of exposed pretence versus verified legality. The rhetorical sting is deliberate. It seeks to portray the opposition as confused, overreaching and constitutionally stranded, while presenting the Mohammed Anyanwu axis as the only side with operational control.

Yet the deeper story is that the PDP has become trapped in a contest where law, legitimacy and loyalty are no longer moving in the same direction. The Supreme Court ruling has not healed the party. It has instead armed each faction with a fresh vocabulary of triumph. One side says the Ibadan convention has been legally smashed. The other says the court merely refused to endorse a false takeover and left the existing leadership intact. For a party that is still trying to rebuild credibility after years of disunity, the optics are grim. The bigger danger is not only internal embarrassment. It is the possibility that, heading into the next election cycle, the PDP may still be fighting over who the party actually is.

The political consequence is obvious. Every side is now shopping for legal superiority, and every statement is being written as though it could become tomorrow’s court exhibit. Olayinka’s outburst, Wabara’s takeover claim, and the Wike camp’s insistence on continuity all point to the same reality. The PDP is not merely divided. It is competing with itself for the right to exist as a single party with one recognised command structure. Until that is resolved, the crisis will keep producing more speeches than solutions, more factions than fixers, and more noise than unity.