Saraki: Ibadan PDP Convention Deepened Party Crisis, I Warned Against It
Former Senate President, Bukola Saraki, says he advised against the national convention organised by the Kabiru Turaki-led faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), warning that it would worsen the party’s internal crisis.
The convention, held in Ibadan, Oyo State, on November 15 and 16, 2025, has since triggered a series of legal disputes and further deepened divisions within the PDP.
The crisis escalated on March 9, when the Court of Appeal in Abuja affirmed a Federal High Court judgment restraining the PDP from proceeding with the national convention. A three-member panel dismissed the party’s appeal challenging the lower court’s jurisdiction, holding that the PDP failed to comply with constitutional requirements guiding the conduct of its convention.
Delivering the lead judgment, Justice Uchechukwu Onyemenam ruled that no valid notice of the convention was served on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), as required by law. The court also held that congresses were not properly conducted in at least 14 states before the convention took place.
Speaking on Channels Television’s Politics Today, Saraki said the Ibadan convention aggravated existing cracks within the party.
He explained that, in the buildup to the exercise, the PDP reconciliation committee he chaired, alongside the party’s Board of Trustees, had advised strongly against holding the convention, but their recommendations were ignored.
“I screamed, I shouted at that time, and said, ‘Look, don’t let us go and do this convention. The best thing for us at this point is to set up a caretaker committee,’” Saraki said.
He added that the committee had consistently advised party leaders to suspend the convention due to unresolved disputes.
“We told them, don’t go to Ibadan. There was no point going. Instead, let us form a caretaker committee. If we had done that, we would not have this crisis,” he said.
Saraki noted that the intention of any convention should have been to consolidate agreement among stakeholders, not to escalate disagreements.
“The purpose of going to Ibadan for any convention was for everybody to be on board and agree on what we were going to do when we got there,” he said.
He added that unresolved issues, including incomplete state congresses and disputes over party positions across zones, should have been settled before the gathering.
Saraki further disclosed that his reconciliation committee worked for months to stabilise the party and prevent a breakdown ahead of the convention.
“We kept it together for months, trying to hold all the forces together,” he said, adding that fears at the time included the possibility of the party’s key organs becoming non-functional.
He maintained that the PDP had managed to avoid open factional collapse until after the Ibadan convention, which he said marked a turning point in the party’s crisis.