Bukola Saraki, the former senate president, says he advised against the national convention held by the Kabiru Turaki-led faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
The convention held in Ibadan, the Oyo state capital, on
November 15 and 16, 2025, has triggered a series of legal battles, further
deepening internal divisions within the PDP.
The crisis peaked on March 9 when the court of appeal in
Abuja affirmed the judgment of a federal high court, which restrained the PDP
from conducting the national convention.
Delivering judgment on Monday, a three-member panel of the
appellate court dismissed an appeal filed by the PDP challenging the
jurisdiction of the federal high court in Abuja to entertain the suit.
Uchechukwu Onyemenam, who delivered the judgment, held that
the PDP violated constitutional provisions guiding the conduct of its
convention.
Onyemenam agreed that no valid notice of the convention was
served on the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), as required by
law.
The appellate court also held that congresses were not
conducted in more than 14 states, as stipulated, before the event.
‘I WARNED AGAINST IBADAN CONVENTION’
Speaking on Politics Today, a ChannelsTV programme aired on
Thursday, Saraki said the Ibadan convention worsened the internal rift plaguing
the PDP.
He said that in the build-up to the event, the PDP
reconciliation committee, which he chaired at the time, alongside the party’s
board of trustees, advised against the convention, but their recommendations
were not heeded.
“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 in time
is let us have a caretaker committee,” Saraki said.
“I made a statement. There was a special committee set up.
They came and I told them my advice is that we should not go to that
convention.
”We should have a caretaker committee because it was clearly
the best solution for us, and that if we did that, we would have avoided this
issue of different factions. Unfortunately, they did not heed that advice.”
Saraki said the convention was ill-timed, noting that the
party had not fully reconciled its internal disputes before the event.
“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, and meet all the criteria that had been demanded,” he said.
“There was the issue of congresses in some states that had
not been conducted. There were also talks about who should take which positions
across the zones. So, when you go to those conventions, it should be
affirmation—you should have resolved issues behind the scenes.”
‘WE WARNED REPEATEDLY’
He noted that his committee repeatedly warned against
proceeding with the convention due to these unresolved issues.
“We said, ‘Don’t go to Ibadan. Don’t go to that convention’.
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.
“Before that, we were not in court. There were not these
kinds of cases against different parts of the party until after the Ibadan
convention.”
The former Kwara governor also detailed how his
reconciliation committee stabilised the PDP ahead of the convention.
Saraki said the committee worked for months to keep the
party united despite mounting tensions, noting that the crisis predated the
convention.
“With greatest humility, what we are seeing now would have
happened a long time ago. We kept it together for months, trying to keep all
the forces together,” he said.
He recalled that there were doubts about the party’s ability
to function, including fears that key organs would not be able to meet.
“People thought we would never be able to have a NEC
meeting… never be able to bring the governors together. But throughout that
period, we kept it together right up to just before the convention,” he said.
“We were the last party that stayed together without being
divided into factions. We avoided all the booby traps along the way.”
Saraki noted that he personally mediated between governors
and former governors to build trust and sustain unity within the party until
the Ibadan convention.
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