Why We Went to Court: The Struggle to Save PDP from Itself Elder Abraham Amah | #NwokeukwuMascot
Politic
We love this party. We have lived its ideals, defended its legacy, and believed in its promise. We were there when the PDP was not just a political party but a national movement a unifying voice across tribes, faiths, and regions. But we have also watched, with great pain, how the light of that noble vision has dimmed under the weight of arrogance, impunity, and disregard for its own constitution.
So, when the party decided to embark on a National Convention without resolving the unresolved the invalidated state and zonal congresses, the conflicting structures, and the sidelining of INEC we knew we had to act. We asked the difficult but necessary questions:
How can a party prepare for a National Convention when so many of its state and zonal congresses remain unsettled? Who are the legitimate delegates when some states have no functional executives? And why should the sale of party forms be restricted to a select few, when openness and participation are the heartbeat of democracy?
These are not just procedural questions they are moral ones. They touch the very soul of what it means to be democratic. The PDP was founded on the belief that power belongs to the people, not to cliques or cabals. To silence members through manipulation is to betray the spirit of its founding fathers.
Under the then Damagum-led National Working Committee, this drift reached a breaking point. That leadership became tone-deaf to reason and blind to reality. The committee found nothing wrong in jettisoning valid court judgments, protecting individuals who had long been expelled from the party. Men like Ali Odefa continued to act and speak for the party, sitting in meetings, signing documents, and taking decisions even when the law had declared otherwise. Such open contempt for judicial orders was not only unconstitutional but dishonorable.
There were other troubling developments: the attempted removal of Distinguished Senator Samuel Anyanwu as National Secretary, and the desperate effort by Ambassador Umar Damagum to perpetuate himself in office even after he had become a divisive symbol and a burden to the very structure he led. When the North-West PDP leaders met and, in his very presence, openly endorsed Turaki Kabiru Tanimu (SAN) as their preferred aspirant for National Chairman, it was not mere politics—it was a polite but powerful vote of no confidence in his continued leadership.
Then came the judgment of the Federal High Court. It was not just a legal pronouncement it was the voice of reason calling the party back from the brink. The judgment was fair, balanced, and rooted in the principle that no institution is greater than the law. It reminded us all that the PDP must not only preach democracy it must practice it. Its leaders must obey the rules they themselves wrote, for leadership without discipline is the seed of destruction. The court’s message was clear: PDP must respect its constitution, and its leaders must stop acting arrogantly as though they were bigger than the law. The rule of law is the supremacy of the law not the convenience of the powerful.
But this decay did not begin today. Its roots go back to 2015, when our great party began to drift from its original compass. Before the 2015 general elections, the PDP which proudly birthed the concept of zoning as a moral compass for national unity embarked on its presidential primaries without any credible zoning arrangement. The consequences were obvious and painful. Both the National Chairman of the party and its Presidential Candidate emerged from the North, in clear contradiction to the very principle that once gave our party national balance and moral credibility.
When the G5 Governors tried to call for order and return the party to fairness, they were dismissed as rebels. Rather than listen to their voice of reason, they were labeled unprintable names and mocked as enemies of progress. Yet, time has vindicated them. The cries of Governor Nyesom Wike and his eminent co-travelers were not cries of rebellion they were cries of rescue. They foresaw the storm the party refused to acknowledge. The consequences of that impunity still haunt us today.
Now, history has presented another opportunity for reflection and rebirth. The current Acting National Chairman, Alhaji Abdulrahman Muhammed, carries on his shoulders a moral responsibility to restore sanity in the midst of madness, and to rebuild what arrogance has broken. The path to reinventing the PDP before 2027 lies not in rhetoric, but in courage the courage to tell the truth, obey the rules, and reform the system from within.
Our decision to go to court was not about power it was about principle. We wanted to remind the PDP that a political party cannot be stronger than its own obedience to law. A house divided against itself cannot stand, and a house that ignores its own rules cannot survive. We did not take the party to court out of anger, but out of hope that it can still rise, still heal, and still lead Nigeria again with moral authority.
The struggle continues. It is not over until justice becomes culture within the PDP. We must return to our founding principles zoning, fairness, discipline, and inclusivity. We must rebuild trust among members and restore the party’s reputation as the moral alternative Nigeria deserves.
When history is written, it will record that when many kept quiet, some of us chose to speak. We spoke because conscience would not let us sleep. We acted because silence would have been complicity.
In the end, what we did was not rebellion it was reform. Not defiance it was devotion. Not conflict it was conscience. And conscience, though often lonely, is the one voice that never dies.
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