• ‘Party’s crisis caused by misinterpretation of judgment’
• Turaki-led faction stages 103rd NEC, 84th BoT meetings

Though former governor of Jigawa State, Sule Lamido, emerged victorious at the Supreme Court while challenging the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) over the disputed 2025 national convention, he has refused to celebrate the ruling, describing it instead as a “painful victory” that exposes deeper fractures within the party he helped build.
 
However, the National Vice Chairman (South East) of PDP, Ray Nnaji, said the crisis in the party resulted from the misinterpretation of Supreme Court rulings.
 
This was as the Tanimu Turaki faction is set to hold its 103rd National Executive Committee (NEC) meeting and 84th Board of Trustees (BoT) meeting in Abuja on Monday, May 4, 2026.
 
Warning that the party he helped build has been badly fractured by the very actors who drove the Ibadan convention that excluded him from the National Chairmanship race, he said the process has left the PDP weakened, divided and politically bruised, with its internal cohesion now severely undermined.
 
He had approached the court after he was denied nomination forms, and when the party proceeded with the convention in defiance of a court order, a process that produced Turaki as chairman before being nullified by the Supreme Court last month.
 
Rather than celebrate the ruling, the former governor expressed anguish that the same political heavyweights — particularly state governors who backed the Ibadan convention and Turaki’s emergence had since abandoned him and the PDP and defected to the All Progressives Congress (APC), the same party they once opposed, leaving behind what he described as a fractured and weakened opposition.
 
He accused the party elite of turning a family institution into a battlefield driven by ego and ambition, warning that the PDP is being hollowed out from within as its leadership and power brokers drift away after fueling internal conflict.

Nnaji, while addressing newsmen over the weekend following the increased internal tensions in the party, noted that the PDP structure “remains intact and fully functional,” with no leadership vacuum as being speculated in some quarters.
 
“There is no leadership vacuum. We are in charge. We are in possession of our national secretariat, and the party structure is intact,” he said.
 
The remarks came after comments by former Senate President, Adolphus Wabara, that the party’s BoT had assumed leadership following a Supreme Court judgment on the disputed Ibadan national convention.
 
Wabara had argued that the BoT, as the party’s second-highest organ, was constitutionally positioned to take temporary control after the apex court invalidated rival factions that emerged from the convention.

However, Nnaji rejected that interpretation, insisting it does not reflect the actual position of the judgment.

The NEC and BoT meetings were sequel to a signed resolution of two-thirds of NEC members, pursuant to the provisions of Section 31 of the PDP Constitution after due correspondence to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
 
A statement by the party reads: “In accordance with the PDP constitution, attendance at the 103rd meeting is strictly for statutory members of the NEC, including PDP state governors, members of the National Assembly (PDP caucus), BoT members, state chairmen, national ex-officio, former NWC members, former governors, principal officers of NASS and other designated stakeholders/members of the NEC.