2025 PDP convention: Court to deliver ruling on joinder application

2026-02-19 - 19:56

By Adeola Badru Justice Ladiran Akintola of the Oyo State High Court, Ibadan, has scheduled to rule next Wednesday on an application for joinder brought by a faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in relation to the party’s 2025 elective convention. The development followed an earlier ex parte application filed by Folahan Malomo Adelabi, claimant/applicant in Suit No. I/1336/2025. In a previous ruling, Justice Akintola granted an interim injunction restraining the defendants and their agents from disrupting or frustrating the conduct of the PDP’s scheduled national convention. Despite the pending motion on notice before the Court, the convention was subsequently held in Ibadan and produced Saminu Turaki as Chairman. When proceedings resumed, counsel to Austin Nwachukwu and two others, Sunday Ibrahim, SAN, informed the Court that he had filed an application seeking to join his clients as parties to the suit. The application was opposed by counsel representing the Saminu Turaki group, Musibau Adetunmbi, SAN, as well as counsel to the Oyo State PDP, Dapo Durosaro. In urging the Court to grant the application, Ibrahim relied on a further affidavit filed on 14 November 2025, submitting that his clients would depend on all its paragraphs in support of the reliefs sought. He argued that the issues presently before the Oyo State High Court had already been determined by the Federal High Court sitting in Ibadan. According to him, the matter had been adjudicated upon at the Federal High Court, and the appeal currently pending before the appellate court arose from that decision. He added that his clients were defendants in the suit determined at the Federal High Court and are also parties to the matter pending before the appellate court, hence their request to be joined in the present proceedings. Opposing the application, Adetunmbi, SAN, contended that the applicants neither contested nor participated in any capacity in the PDP’s 2025 elective convention. He maintained that the application lacked merit and that the applicants had no locus standi to seek joinder in the case. Similarly, Durosaro urged the Court to dismiss the application and to reject the further affidavit filed on 14 November 2025, describing it as incompetent and unlawful. He argued that a legal practitioner cannot depose to an affidavit in a matter he or she is conducting, noting that such conduct amounts to professional misconduct and should be discountenanced by the Court. After hearing submissions from all counsel, Justice Akintola adjourned the matter to Wednesday, 25 November 2025, for ruling on the application for joinder.