Senior Advocate of Nigeria Aba Maduabuchi has cautioned against premature celebration following the Supreme Court’s judgments on the ADC and PDP leadership crises, explaining that while the apex court set aside the status quo ante bellum order in the ADC case, it did not determine the substantive question of who leads the party, and that the Abdulmalik judgment voiding the Mark-led congress committee remains a valid and living judgment that must be obeyed until it is appealed and overturned.
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On the PDP, Maduabuchi stated that the Supreme Court “completely obliterated” the Sam Anyanwu faction, declared them non-members of the party, nullified the Turaki-led convention but left the PDP as a party intact, with the authentic leadership traceable to the Damagun-led executive from which the convention process originated.
Speaking on a television programme, the senior advocate provided a nuanced legal analysis that challenges the widespread interpretation that the Supreme Court’s ruling was a comprehensive victory for Mark’s ADC or a death blow to the PDP.
Maduabuchi’s most striking observation on the ADC case was his insistence that the substantive leadership question remains unresolved.
“People are celebrating. I don’t know whether. Nothing has been decided still on ADC,” Maduabuchi stated.
He explained that the ADC matter “had no business in the Supreme Court in the first place” because there was no appealable decision from the Federal High Court. Justice Nwite had merely ordered the applicant to put the defendants on notice, not delivered a substantive ruling.
“There was no decision of the Federal High Court that was appealable. The court said put them on notice and they go to Court of Appeal without even obtaining leave because it is an interlocutory appeal,” Maduabuchi explained.
He said the Court of Appeal correctly found that there was no valid appeal before it but then overstepped by imposing the status quo ante bellum order.
“The Court of Appeal has overstepped its bounds by making an order nobody sought. In law, we say that courts are not Father Christmas. They do not give you what you didn’t ask for and what you do not merit,” Maduabuchi stated.
“Once the court said there is no valid appeal before us, it should just wash its hands off the matter,” the senior advocate added.
He explained that this was the only appealable point that could move from the Court of Appeal to the Supreme Court, and that the apex court properly resolved it by voiding the status quo order.
“Every other thing they brought to court was dismissed by the Supreme Court. But that main point, that the Court of Appeal did not have the powers or jurisdiction to make an order not sought by any of the parties, was properly made by the Supreme Court,” Maduabuchi stated.
Maduabuchi was emphatic that the Supreme Court’s ruling did not determine who leads the ADC.
“The Supreme Court did not decide the issue of leadership. The only thing the Supreme Court removed was the status quo. The main issue is still in the High Court,” Maduabuchi stated.
He explained that what is pending before Justice Abdulmalik at the Federal High Court is the substantive question of “who takes over the leadership of the ADC” — whether Gombe, who claims he should have assumed leadership when the previous NWC resigned, or the Mark-led group, who were appointed as the new leadership.
“These are two different issues. The issue of what happened in the states is different from who is occupying the position at the national level,” Maduabuchi stated.
He predicted: “I can bet you that the David Mark thing will go back to the Supreme Court again.”
In a defence of INEC Chairman Amupitan that runs counter to the opposition’s criticism, Maduabuchi argued that when INEC removed Mark from its portal following the Court of Appeal’s status quo ante bellum order, the chairman was correctly obeying the law.
Maduabuchi drew a critical distinction between “status quo” and “status quo ante bellum.”
“Status quo ante bellum means before the commencement of hostilities. That is what we mean. So when INEC, acting on the order of the Court of Appeal, removed David Mark, they were on solid ground because the order of the Court of Appeal was maintain the status quo ante bellum, not the status quo,” Maduabuchi explained.
“If they say maintain the status quo, what they mean is stay where you are, don’t move. Status quo ante bellum means go back to the position before the dispute began,” he clarified.
“When the INEC Chairman as a lawyer, as a professor of law, removed David Mark, he was only obeying the law. Now the Supreme Court has said the Court of Appeal was wrong. He has restored David Mark. But we won’t give him an accolade for being subject to the rule of law. That is our problem. Public officers are always criticised but we do not give them credit when they deserve it,” Maduabuchi stated.
On the question of whether Justice Abdulmalik’s Federal High Court judgment voiding the ADC’s congress committee has been rendered academic by the Supreme Court ruling, Maduabuchi was clear: it has not.
“It cannot be rendered academic. It is a living matter because a judgment has been rendered. It is a valid judgment and the court acted within its jurisdiction. If you are affected by it, you take the next step to the Court of Appeal,” Maduabuchi stated.
He explained the practical implication: the state chairmen who won the Abdulmalik judgment can approach INEC with that judgment and seek to have the party activated on their terms.
“As of today, there is one valid judgment. If there is a judgment that has said this, the state chairmen can go to INEC with that judgment and say activate for us,” Maduabuchi stated.
He acknowledged this creates a complex situation where multiple judgments from different courts may compete, but stated that ultimately “at the end of the day, if Abdulmalik delivers her own judgment on the national leadership question, all of them will come together and then options will be available to decide which of the judgments to pick.”
On the PDP ruling, Maduabuchi provided his most forceful analysis, stating that the Supreme Court’s judgment went far beyond merely nullifying the Ibadan convention.
“I don’t know why we are concentrating on this judgment regarding the Ibadan convention. But the convention is not what took people to court. What took PDP to court is who are the proper and valid officials of the PDP,” Maduabuchi stated.
He explained that there were two separate appeals. One was argued by Paul Erokoro SAN for the Turaki faction and another by Chris Uche SAN. But there was also an appeal by Sam Anyanwu’s group.
“The Sam Anyanwu faction was completely obliterated. The Supreme Court said, ‘My friend, you have no business with the PDP. You’ve been expelled.’ So that put paid to the Wike faction completely,” Maduabuchi stated.
“If there is no Wike faction, there is only the Turaki faction left,” Maduabuchi added.
Maduabuchi explained the legal reasoning behind the Supreme Court’s decision on the PDP convention, noting that both the majority and minority judgments agreed on one fundamental point but diverged on another.
“Both the majority judgment and the minority judgment agreed that this is an internal affair of a political party. But the majority took a step further to say that what they did, they did in defiance of a court order,” Maduabuchi explained.
“The other group was not ready to go that extra mile. But the majority said no, even though it is their affair, they did it when there was a valid subsisting order binding them, debarring them from conducting the convention,” the senior advocate stated.
He invoked a legal principle to illustrate the point: “Even if an area court tries somebody for mining, which is exclusive to the Federal High Court, and if it convicts you, you won’t go home. The police will take you to the correctional centre. The lawyers will run around and appeal on lack of jurisdiction, and when the higher court agrees with you, you will come out. But until then, the order stands.”
The implication is clear: even though the PDP convention was an internal party matter that courts would ordinarily not interfere with, the fact that it was conducted in defiance of a subsisting Federal High Court order made it invalid regardless of the jurisdictional question.
Maduabuchi drew a critical distinction between the nullification of the convention and the survival of the PDP as a party.
“It does not mean that the PDP as a body has been removed or was in any way affected. It is the Turaki leadership, the chairman with all his national working committee and national executive committee, that were dissolved. But the PDP as a party as we know it is still intact,” Maduabuchi stated.
He traced the authentic PDP leadership back to the Damagun-led executive from which the convention process originated.
“They sprouted from Damagun and the convention. They nullified the convention but they did not nullify the fact that the authentic national working committee and national executive committee of the PDP was headed by Damagun. So whoever originates from Damagun, whichever group now belongs to Damagun, is the authentic PDP on ground,” Maduabuchi stated.
He noted that this was why the Adolphus Wabara-led group was already taking steps to take over party property, having positioned itself as the faction aligned with the pre-convention Damagun leadership.
Maduabuchi also commented briefly on a separate suit before the Federal High Court brought by the Incorporated Trustees of Former National Legislators, seeking to have INEC deregister certain political parties including the ADC, the Labour Party, the ZLP, and the Accord Party for allegedly failing to meet the constitutional threshold under Section 225A of the amended Constitution.
While noting he must be careful because the matter is pending, Maduabuchi raised two fundamental objections.
On locus standi, he questioned the standing of the petitioners: “You are not a political party. You don’t want to run an election. You are a former national legislator. What is your business? How did you suffer anything above and more than any ordinary Nigerian?”
On the validity of the constitutional provision being invoked, he raised a temporal argument: “The same constitution was amended this year. So the law, the constitution of last year, is not the constitution of this year. When the constitution says unless you do so and so, you look at when that law took effect, which is when the president signed the amendment into law.”
“From that day that the president signed that amendment into law, have we held an election? If we have not held an election, which law then did they flout? You can’t go back to a law that has been amended and dropped,” Maduabuchi argued.
He concluded that any infraction must be after the signing of the current amendment, not before, and that the law cannot take retrospective effect.
Maduabuchi’s analysis, delivered with the authority of a Senior Advocate who has practised across multiple jurisdictions and legal disciplines, presents a more complex picture than the victory celebrations on either side suggest.
For the ADC, his message is clear: the Supreme Court has removed the obstacle that was the status quo ante bellum order, but the substantive leadership question remains unresolved. The Abdulmalik judgment remains valid and must be reckoned with. And the matter will almost certainly return to the Supreme Court.
For the PDP, his analysis is equally sobering for one faction and encouraging for another. The Turaki convention has been nullified and the Turaki leadership dissolved. The Anyanwu faction has been “completely obliterated.” But the PDP survives, with its authentic leadership traceable to the Damagun era.
For INEC, his defence of the chairman’s compliance with the Court of Appeal order offers a rare voice of support from the legal profession, arguing that Amupitan was obeying the law when he derecognised Mark, not acting out of partisanship.
And for Nigeria’s democracy, the analysis underscores the complexity of the legal landscape in which the 2027 elections must be conducted, with multiple courts issuing competing judgments, multiple factions claiming legitimacy, and the fundamental questions of party leadership still being litigated even as the primaries deadline approaches.
As Maduabuchi stated with characteristic directness: “Nothing has been decided still on ADC.”
The celebrations may be premature. The litigation continues. And the courts have not yet spoken their final word.
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