Former Senate President Bukola Saraki has disclosed that the Ibadan convention held by the Kabiru Turaki-led faction of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) worsened the party’s crisis.
Naija News reports that the convention, held in Ibadan, the Oyo State capital, on November 15 and 16, 2025, triggered a series of legal battles, further deepening internal divisions within the PDP.
Speaking on the development during an appearance on Channels Television, Saraki said he advised against the national convention, but the faction failed to heed his advice.
He explained that in the build-up to the event, the PDP reconciliation committee, which he chaired at the time, alongside the party’s board of trustees, advised against the convention, but their recommendations were not heeded.
Saraki said, “I screamed, I shouted at that time, and said, ‘Look, don’t let us go and do this convention. The best thing for us at this point in time is let us have a caretaker committee.
“I made a statement. There was a special committee set up. They came, and I told them my advice is that we should not go to that convention.
”We should have a caretaker committee because it was clearly the best solution for us, and that if we did that, we would have avoided this issue of different factions. Unfortunately, they did not heed that advice.”
Saraki said the convention was ill-timed, noting that the party had not fully reconciled its internal disputes before the event.
“The purpose of going to Ibadan for any convention was for everybody to be on board and agree on what we were going to do when we got there, and meet all the criteria that had been demanded.
“There was the issue of congresses in some states that had not been conducted. There were also talks about who should take which positions across the zones. So, when you go to those conventions, it should be affirmation, you should have resolved issues behind the scenes,” he said.
He noted that his committee repeatedly warned against proceeding with the convention due to these unresolved issues.
“We said, ‘Don’t go to Ibadan. Don’t go to that convention’. There was no point going. Instead, let us form a caretaker committee. If we had done that, we would not have this crisis.
“Before that, we were not in court. There were not these kinds of cases against different parts of the party until after the Ibadan convention,” he said.
