The Court of Appeal in Abuja has upheld key lower‑court decisions that blocked the Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) national convention held in Ibadan in November 2025, especially over the alleged exclusion of former Jigawa State governor Sule Lamido from the party’s chairmanship race.
Gatekeepers News reports that in a unanimous judgment delivered on Monday, a three‑member appellate panel affirmed the November 14 Federal High Court order restraining the PDP from holding its convention without allowing Lamido to participate as a chairmanship candidate. The judges said the party’s decision to go ahead with the event despite a valid subsisting court order was contemptuous and showed disrespect for the judicial process.
The court rejected the PDP’s defence that it was acting on another favourable judgment from a different court of coordinate jurisdiction. It held that a party in a legal dispute cannot pick which court order to obey or ignore and that the proper course of action would have been to apply for a stay of execution or appeal the lower court’s decision before proceeding.
As part of its ruling, the appellate court dismissed the PDP’s appeal for lacking merit and awarded ₦2 million in costs against the party.
The case stems from Lamido’s argument that he was unfairly denied the chance to obtain a nomination form to contest for the PDP national chairmanship, leading to the Federal High Court’s earlier order halting the convention until that issue was resolved.
