A High Court of the Federal Capital Territory has dramatically escalated the legal confrontation surrounding the People Democratic Party’s leadership crisis, issuing a formal and legally consequential contempt warning against PDP National Secretary Samuel Anyanwu and INEC Chairman Professor Joash Amupitan, placing both men on explicit notice that imprisonment was the direct and immediate consequence awaiting them if they continued to defy a binding court judgment that had affirmed Anyanwu’s expulsion from the party and that both men were legally obligated to honour without further delay.
The formal Form 48 Notice of Consequences of Disobedience to Court Order, issued by Jephtha Musa of Maxim Law Firm, Abuja, was physically served on Anyanwu at his Wuye District residence in Abuja and on the INEC Chairman at the commission’s headquarters in Maitama. The notice constituted a formal preliminary step toward full contempt proceedings and warned both parties in explicit terms to cease their continuing disobedience and comply fully and immediately with the judgment delivered on January 12, 2026, or face committal to prison.
The underlying judgment, delivered in Suit No. CV/1050/2025, had dismissed Anyanwu’s legal challenge to his expulsion from the PDP, comprehensively upholding the party’s disciplinary process and affirming that the decision to expel him had been properly taken in accordance with the party’s constitution. The applicants pressing for compliance, led by Ambassador Iliya Umar Damagum representing himself and the PDP National Executive Committee, alleged that despite the judgment’s unambiguous terms and its legally binding nature, neither Anyanwu nor the INEC Chairman had taken any concrete steps to give effect to its provisions.
The contempt warning intensified already mounting legal pressure on INEC that had been building since a formal letter sent on April 16, 2026, by senior counsel Abdullahi Ibrahim, acting on behalf of the Turaki-led PDP faction, had argued in detailed constitutional and legal terms that INEC was bound to enforce the court’s judgment and had demanded that the commission take several specific and verifiable steps. These included expunging all recognition accorded to Anyanwu since January 12, 2026, removing from its official records all correspondences, notices, and documents bearing his signature in his purported capacity as National Secretary, and delisting his name from the commission’s official portal and all related databases with immediate effect.
The legal team representing the Turaki faction stressed that despite Anyanwu having filed a Notice of Appeal against the January 12 judgment, that appeal did not and could not operate as an automatic stay of execution of the original judgment, which therefore remained fully valid, fully binding, and immediately enforceable as a matter of settled Nigerian constitutional law. By operation of the judgment, the lawyers argued, Anyanwu had legally ceased to be a member or officer of the PDP and consequently had no legal standing, authority, or capacity to act on the party’s behalf in any capacity whatsoever.
They cited Section 287(3) of the 1999 Constitution, which unambiguously provided that decisions of courts of competent jurisdiction were binding on all authorities and all persons throughout the federation, in support of their argument that INEC was constitutionally obligated to enforce the court’s judgment without exception and that any continued recognition of Anyanwu as National Secretary amounted to a direct breach of the commission’s constitutional duty and a deliberate and unacceptable undermining of judicial authority.
At the time of filing this report, neither Anyanwu nor the INEC Chairman had publicly indicated that they had taken or intended to take any steps toward compliance with the judgment, leaving the threat of full contempt proceedings as a live, immediate, and rapidly approaching legal reality that could have significant institutional and political consequences.
