There are fears that the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) may lose its permanent national secretariat complex to a serving All Progressives Congress (APC) senator, Jimoh Ibrahim.
Ibrahim, who represents Ondo South district in the 10th Senate, is laying claim to ownership of the land on which the complex is being built.
The massive building under construction, located on Plot 243, Cadastral Zone A, in the Central Business District, Abuja, occupies 7114.39 square meters land area.
In what has become a legal encumbrance on the land, Senator Ibrahim is said to have insisted that the plot is part of an expanse of land belonging to NICON Insurance Limited, which he acquired in December 2005.
The land was alloted to the PDP sometime in 2007, and construction work on the project started in 2010, during the PDP-controlled Yar ‘Adua/Jonathan administration.
But Ibrahim, who acquired NICON Insurance in two years before the land was given to the PDP, is claiming that there are no official documents to show that the plot was properly excised from an expanse of land originally owned by NICON.
In suit No. CV 1363-17, filed in 2017 by Ibrahim’s NICON, seeking to reclaim the plot, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) was listed as the first defendant, while the PDP was cited as second defendant.
The last court hearing in the case was on February 10, 2025 where the FCT Minister was represented by lawyers from his ministry.
Curiously, the incumbent FCT Minister, Nyesom Wike, issued a revocation order on the same plot in March 2025, a month after the last court hearing on the case.
This has trigerred anxiety within the PDP, raising fears that the land and the complex under construction might be handed over to the APC senator by the minister.
The fears are being accentuated by the ongoing supremacy battle between the FCT Minister and the leadership of the PDP, over the control of the party’s structure at the national level.
Wike, who was governor of Rivers State from 2015 to 2023 on the platform of the PDP, was appointed minister in 2023 by President Bola Tinubu.
The ex Rivers governor has since switched loyalty to Tinubu and the ruling APC. He has been stoking leadership crisis in the PDP that has now left the party in total disarray.
The PDP national secretariat building under construction, is a potential architectural masterpiece. It’s designed to house the party’s offices as well as provide space for commercial leasing that could generate income to the party.
The various components of the 12-storey building include two basement floors with parking lots that could conveniently accommodate about 360 vehicles.
Other facilities that come with the building include a modern conference centre with over 300 seating capacity, with in-built hi-tech ICT facilities.
The building is also designed to accommodate support services like IT and Telecommunication services; internal and external electrical and mechanical services; external works and beautification and landscaping of the surroundings.
The project was handed over to the contractors on April 20, 2010, with a completion time frame of 30 months, ending October 2012.
Party sources said civil and structural work on the entire project had gone up to about 98 percent completion.
The contractors handling the project were said to have abandoned the site in early 2014, owing to the failure of the party to commit funds to the project.
The PDP had in late 2014, during the Jonathan Presidency, raised over N21 billion through fund-raising dinners, coordinated by a former Information Minister, Prof Jerry Gana.
The funds were purportedly meant for the completion of the building, but not a single block had been added to the construction work 11 years after.
Among the major donors at the time were billionaire businessmen, Alhaji Aliko Dangote and Mr Femi Otedola.
