Despite numerous court judgments stopping the elective national convention of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) billed for Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, on Saturday (today), the party has proceeded with the exercise.

There are three subsisting judgements on the two-day convention.

On 31 October, James Omotosho, a judge of the Federal High Court, Abuja, halted the convention, referencing the absence of valid congresses. He ordered the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) not to monitor or supervise the exercise.

The judgement came a few weeks after he refused an interim injunction sought by some members of the party loyal to the FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike.

However, on 4 November A. L. Akintola, a judge of the Oyo State High Court, ordered the PDP to proceed with the convention and ordered INEC to monitor it.

Meanwhile, at that point, the dispute shifted to questions of judicial authority regarding which court had the power to determine the matter, and whether jurisdictional differences between Abuja and Ibadan affected the validity of their competing orders.

Even so, barely a week after the last judgement, Peter Lifu of the Federal High Court in Abuja, on 11 November, delivering a judgement in a suit brought by a former Jigawa governor, Sule Lamido, again stopped the convention and directed INEC not to recognise it.

The governor filed the suit because he was not allowed to buy the nomination form to run for the office of the party’s national chairman.

Some northern leaders of the PDP had, about a week earlier, picked a former Special Duties Minister, Kabiru Turaki, as the consensus cand