ABDULWAHAB AHMED
Introduction
Kwara APC has found itself in a serious political quagmire, and the problem did not start today. For Kwarans with ears to the political ground, today’s quagmire started shortly after the O to ge tsunami that swept away Saraki’s political dynasty.
A few days after Mallam AbdulRahman AbdulRasaq was elected Executive Governor of Kwara State, he went on a retreat with the newly elected legislators in a West African country.
There, he stated that the first assignment of the executive and legislators is to retire politicians who gave everything, human and material resources, to ensure their election.
Within weeks, O to ge became O tu ka as key prominent politicians that fought for the success of the revolution, like Professor Oba Abdulrahman, Alhaji Ibrahim Isa Bio, Alhaji Lai Muhammed, Alhaji M T Mamman, Mrs. Gbemi Saraki, Alhaji Bashir Omolaja Bolarinwa, Barr. Iyiola Akogun, Moshood Mustapha, Lukman Mustapha and several others were humiliated, disgraced and pushed to the sidelines.
Patience wanes after seven years
For many years, Kwara APC members, especially the elders, have urged intending aspirants at all levels and the youth to tolerate AbdulRasaq’s misrule, saying he would leave after eight years.
But the Governor always nursed an agenda: to install a stooge who would continue after him, just as Dr. Bukola Saraki, the Governor of Kwara State from 2023 to 2011, did with Alhaji AbdulFatah Ahmed from 2011 to 2019.
Since he has gone on unchallenged on his mismanagement of Kwara State for seven years, AbdulRasaq thought getting a third term via the Kwara North Agenda – with the installation of the Speaker of the Kwara State House Assembly, Hon. Yakubu Danladi – would be a walk in the park.
Meanwhile, the awakening has started, and blocs in the party were ready to resist him for the first time.
When AbdulRasaq organised the most shambolic party primary election in the history of Kwara State and declared his anointed candidate, Hon. Danladi, the winner, members who were robbed cried foul.
Since the day Danladi was declared winner of the phantom party primaries, Kwara APC has been thrown into a kind of crisis AbdulRasaq had never witnessed before.
Members of the Kwara APC who have tolerated him for seven years are now ready for a fight to the finish. This might not only lead to the party’s implosion in Kwara, but also to apathy during the Kwara gubernatorial election in February 2027, and a protest vote that could give victory to the opposition and finally nail the coffin of the O to ge revolution.
Kwara APC Elders warn against party implosion
With the crisis caused by the phantom election threatening the foundation of the APC, the APC Elders Caucus, led by Sir (Dr.) Chief James Bamisaiye Ayenioye, JP, on Monday, June 15, 2026, in Ilorin, Kwara State, addressed the media.
Sir Ayenioye spoke on recent developments within the party, particularly regarding the conduct of the governorship primary election and its implications for the future of the APC in Kwara State.
“APC, in Kwara State, is standing at a crossroads, and there comes a time when silence is no longer golden. There comes a time when those who have invested years building a political institution must speak up when they believe that the institution is being led towards avoidable danger. It is our considered view that the APC in Kwara State has reached such a moment.”
Ayenioye could not understand why Hon. Danladi, who had earlier secured the seat to return to the Kwara State House of Assembly, was surprisingly announced as the winner of the gubernatorial primary election that never took place.
He said, “We are therefore amazed, very disturbed and concerned that the Governor of Kwara State, who is the leader of the state, upheld the purported victory of Danladi and went ahead by presenting him to the national leadership of the APC, as the gubernatorial candidate for the Party in Kwara State’’.
Danladi, he argued, does not represent the strongest political option available to the party at this critical moment.
Aiyenioye said, “He is neither the most popular nor the most broadly acceptable option available to the APC today. We do not believe he possesses the level of statewide appeal required to unite the party, inspire confidence among undecided voters and effectively confront a rapidly strengthening opposition.”
They therefore appealed to President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, the national chairman of APC, Professor Nentawe Goshwe Yilwatda, and members of the NWC to “take a second look at the situation in Kwara State and engage more broadly with the critical stakeholders across the State and to consider the long-term health, stability and sustainability of the APC above all other considerations.”
Elders met the 10 aggrieved aspirants in Abuja
After the Ilorin press conference, Ayenioye and other members of the Kwara APC Elders Caucus met with the party’s national leadership and 10 of its gubernatorial aspirants in Abuja.
The ten aspirants in attendance included: – Hon. Dr. Bashir Omolaja Bolarinwa; Sen. Salihu Mustapha, Turakin Ilorin; Sen. Dr. Ibrahim Yahaya Oloriegbe; Alh. Tajudeen Abdulkadir Audu, Makaman Lafiagi; Dr. Toyin Tajudeen Alabi; Rt. Hon. Mohammed Bio Omar; Dr. Muyideen Salako; Mohammed Dele Belgore SAN; Amb. Abdulfatai Yahya Seriki and Capt. Ahmad Mahmud.
The aspirants revealed that Governor AbdulRazaq had at no time, either before or after the said gubernatorial primary election in the state, met with the aspirants to discuss the modality for the primary election, either by way of consensus or free and direct primary election, as was expected from the Governor as the leader of the party in the state.
At the meeting with the aspirants, they informed the elders that they had resolved to work as a team and to accept whichever of them the party’s national leadership may choose as the gubernatorial candidate in Kwara State.
The aspirants, in addition, agreed to work with the Elders Caucus and other critical stakeholders in the APC to save the party from the looming and impending Waterloo arising from the imposition of candidates.
