Nigeria’s Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the main opposition party, has sunk into renewed turmoil after a faction aligned with Nyesom Wike, minister for Abuja’s Federal Capital Territory (FCT), announced a shift in national convention dates and moved to dissolve zonal structures.
Okay News reports that the Wike-aligned National Caretaker Working Committee, through its Publicity Secretary, Jungudo Mohammed, spoke in Abuja, Nigeria’s capital, on Tuesday, 3 February 2026. He said the convention earlier fixed for Saturday, 28 March 2026, was shifted to Sunday, 29 March 2026, and Monday, 30 March 2026.
Mohammed also said the committee dissolved the South-West and North-West zonal committees and the Plateau State zonal committee, and that caretaker leadership would be appointed for the affected structures.
PDP governors rejected the decisions, saying the caretaker committee lacked authority under party rules to set convention dates or dismantle zonal bodies. The governors back the Kabiru Tanimu Turaki (Senior Advocate of Nigeria [SAN]) led National Working Committee (NWC), including Seyi Makinde of Oyo State in south-western Nigeria and Bala Mohammed of Bauchi State in north-eastern Nigeria.
The Turaki group’s National Publicity Secretary, Ini Ememobong, said the caretaker committee “lacked the capacity and the locus” to take such steps. He maintained that the zonal committees “have not been dissolved” and described the claim as “a movie called Fool’s Paradise”.
The dispute is linked to a judgment by Nigeria’s Federal High Court in Ibadan, the capital of Oyo State, delivered on Friday, 30 January 2026. The court annulled the PDP national convention held in Ibadan on Saturday, 15 November 2025, and Sunday, 16 November 2025, and restrained Turaki and other officers elected at that convention from acting as the party’s national leaders.
After the ruling, Ememobong said the Turaki-led NWC had instructed its lawyers to appeal. The Wike-aligned faction welcomed the judgment and said it would organise a new convention to elect a fresh NWC.
Both camps have also sought recognition from the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), Nigeria’s election management body, but the commission declined to recognise either group, triggering more cases as parties prepare for the 2027 general elections.
PDP management and staff later reaffirmed loyalty to Turaki, arguing that leadership and conventions are internal party affairs and that INEC was duly notified under Nigeria’s Electoral Act, 2022. They cited Supreme Court rulings on internal affairs and court limits. They urged the National Judicial Council, the body that oversees judges in Nigeria, to caution judges they accused of weakening opposition politics.
At the commissioning of the Oyo State PDP secretariat in Oke Ado, Ibadan, Makinde said the party would not allow “vagabonds” to hijack it and expressed confidence in the courts. Wike, through aide Lere Olayinka, said Makinde was politically inconsistent and could be “consumed by the fire of political treachery”. In Rivers State in southern Nigeria, PDP chieftain Chimenem Wodi defended Wike, saying President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, Nigeria’s President, had called Wike the political leader of the state.
