Former Senate President, Bukola Saraki, has said the ongoing crisis rocking the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) could have been avoided if party leaders had heeded repeated warnings against the controversial Ibadan national convention.
“I screamed, I shouted at that time and said look, don’t let us go and do this convention”, Saraki said during an appearance on a programme on Channels Television.
“The best thing for us at that point in time was to have a caretaker committee,” he added.
He said the outcome of the convention validated the concerns raised before it.
“I made it clear. There was a special committee set up, and I told them my advice was that we should not go to that convention.We should have a caretaker committee because it was clearly the best solution, and if we had done that, we would have avoided this issue of different factions”, he stated.
Saraki, who chaired the PDP reconciliation committee at the time, said the party went into the convention without resolving key internal disputes.
“The purpose of going to Ibadan was for everybody to be on board and agree on what we were going to do. When you go to conventions, it should be affirmation. You should have resolved issues behind the scenes”, he said.
According to him, several critical issues remained unsettled, including incomplete congresses in some states and disagreements over zoning of party offices.
“There were issues about congresses not being conducted in some states and also who should take which positions. So there was no point going to that convention in the first place”, he noted.
He stressed that the decision to proceed despite these gaps directly triggered the current legal battles and factional alignments.
“We said, ‘Don’t go to Ibadan. Don’t go.’ There was no point. If we had listened, we would not have this crisis today,” he added.
Saraki further revealed that prior to the convention, the party had managed to hold itself together despite mounting pressure.
“With greatest humility, what we are seeing now would have happened a long time ago. We kept it together for months.
“People thought we would never be able to have a NEC meeting or bring governors together, but we did”, he said.
He said his committee worked extensively to stabilise the party, mediating between governors, former governors and other stakeholders to sustain unity.
“We were the last party that stayed together without being divided into factions. We avoided all the booby traps along the way”, Saraki stressed.
The former Kwara governor warned that the lingering crisis, if not urgently addressed, could weaken the PDP ahead of future elections, as the party continues to grapple with internal instability fueled by the fallout of the Ibadan convention.
Daily Trust reports that the Ibadan convention, held in November 2025 by a faction loyal to Kabiru Turaki, has since become the focal point of legal disputes and deepening divisions within the party.
The crisis worsened after the Court of Appeal in Abuja upheld a lower court ruling restraining the PDP from conducting the convention, citing violations of laid-down procedures.
Delivering the judgment, Justice Uchechukwu Onyemenam held that the party failed to comply with mandatory provisions, including proper notice to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).