By Segun Omoboriola
I woke up this morning to reports claiming that Senator Solomon Adeola Yayi has been endorsed as the consensus candidate for Ogun State APC’s gubernatorial ticket, allegedly at a meeting held at President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Lagos residence. Similar impositions were reportedly lined up for Oyo State (Sarafadeen Alli) and Lagos State (Femi Hamzat).
Let me state this clearly and without equivocation, these reports are false. There was no such meeting. There was no such endorsement. What took place at the President’s residence was a routine Sallah visit, nothing more. President Tinubu has not endorsed any aspirant for the Ogun 2027 race. Those peddling these reports are either dangerously misinformed or deliberately manufacturing fiction to serve their narrow political interests.
I urge party members and the public to disregard this speculation entirely. There is no cause for alarm. The President believes in due process and internal democracy. He will support a candidate who is loyal, tested, and widely acceptable to the party structure. That candidate will emerge through proper consultation with stakeholders, through transparent engagement with party organs, through democratic process. The President has made this position clear repeatedly. Those claiming otherwise are liars.
Let me also address the absurdity of the premise. No stakeholders’ meeting of such magnitude could take place without the presence of party elders. This is Ogun State, where power brokers exist who have built this party from the ground up, who have invested blood and treasure in its success, whose networks determine electoral outcomes. Any genuine consensus process must take cognizance of these interests. Senator Ibikunle Amosun, Gbenga Daniel, the Governor’s Advisory Council, state party chairmen – these are people whose presence and participation are mandatory for any serious political arrangement.
Their absence from this phantom meeting tells you everything you need to know. This was no consensus process. This was a scheme hatched in darkness by operators who believe they can bypass established power structures and impose their preferred candidate through media manipulation and proximity politics.
And let me be absolutely clear about one thing: No one will impose any candidate on us. Certainly no one will impose Senator Adeola Yayi on Ogun State. This is a man who is essentially a sojourner in our politics, someone who has spent his political career representing Lagos interests while eyeing Ogun State as his next conquest. He comes into our state wielding the kind of political bullying and intimidation that might work elsewhere. He subdues people, threatens people, waves connections to powerful figures as if that substitutes for actual grassroots work.
It will never happen. It cannot happen. We reject it completely.
Ogun State has capable sons and daughters who have invested years in building this party, who understand our political terrain, who have earned their place through service and sacrifice. Senator Adeola Yayi is emphatically none of these things. He represents an external imposition, a Lagos agenda masquerading as Ogun politics. We will resist this with everything we have.
Ogun West has waited patiently for its turn to produce a governor. That patience has earned political capital that cannot be dismissed by Lagos power brokers with different agendas. Deputy Governor Noimot Salako-Oyedele has served with competence and built her own support base. Abiodun Isiaq Akinlade has worked the grassroots methodically. Gboyega Isiaka has developed structures across the senatorial district. These are legitimate political ambitions grounded in years of party work, in service to our people, in understanding of our state’s dynamics.
If the conversation shifts to Ogun Central, the field deepens with equally qualified aspirants. Tunde Lemo brings technocratic credentials and national exposure. Sarafa Tunji Isola combines legislative experience with genuine local roots. Iyabo Obasanjo carries a name that still resonates across Ogun politics. Jelili Amusan has been building quietly and systematically.
These are Ogun people. They understand our complexities. They have earned their political standing through work within our state. Any serious consensus process engages these aspirants directly. It maps where their networks overlap and where they conflict. It negotiates accommodations where possible. It acknowledges political realities rather than wishing them away.
This phantom consensus dismisses them all with a single name dropped through anonymous sources to pliant journalists. That is political malpractice of the highest order. Worse, it is an insult to every Ogun stakeholder who has labored to build this party.
The amended Electoral Act requires written consent from all aspirants for consensus candidates. All aspirants. This is a safeguard against exactly this kind of imposition. The law does permit party leaders to convene secret meetings, pick favorites, leak to the press, then declare consensus achieved. The word carries a legal definition. This arrangement meets none of its requirements.
Senate Leader Opeyemi Bamidele appears to be driving much of this mischief, aggressively pushing Senator Adeola despite having no standing in Ogun State’s internal politics. His recent visit where he begged people to accept Adeola as consensus candidate drew immediate pushback from Deputy Governor Salako-Oyedele and other stakeholders. The same agenda returns now, repackaged as presidential consensus, laundered through anonymous sources and false meeting reports.
When your first attempt at imposing a candidate generates hostile reactions from sitting office holders and party stakeholders, the solution involves recognizing you have misread the political terrain entirely. Bamidele has misread it. His principals have misread it. Doubling down with fabricated meeting reports and presidential endorsement claims changes nothing.
We see exactly what this is: a handful of politicians trying to pass their interests off as the party’s collective will, hoping that proximity to power would substitute for the hard work of building genuine consensus. They have overplayed badly.
The APC cannot afford internal warfare heading into 2027. President Tinubu’s reelection depends on structures that function from ward level upward, on cohesion built through genuine stakeholder engagement, on legitimacy that flows from democratic process. Manufacturing consensus through shadowy arrangements while excluding party chairmen, major power brokers, and legitimate aspirants builds no cohesion. It creates parallel power centers. It breeds resentment that will express itself in passive resistance during elections.
Stakeholders across Ogun State have dismissed this scheme as dead on arrival. We have committed to democratic process over backroom deals. We have insisted that legitimate candidates will emerge through transparent engagement with party structures. That commitment is non-negotiable.
Which brings me to the most troubling aspect of this entire saga: Where is Governor Dapo Abiodun?
His silence throughout this controversy is deafening. A governor approaching the end of his tenure carries the responsibility to shape orderly succession through transparent engagement with stakeholders. Abiodun’s refusal to provide clear direction on his succession plans creates the vacuum these schemers now exploit.
The governor needs to firm up. His passivity invites chaos. Leadership demands clarity, especially during succession periods. Abiodun’s failure to take control of this process allows shadowy operators to fill the void with their manufactured consensus, with their false meeting reports, with their phantom endorsements.
Where is he in all this? Why has he allowed external actors to dominate the conversation about Ogun State’s gubernatorial succession? His silence suggests either an abdication of leadership or worrying complicity with these backroom schemes. Either interpretation serves him poorly.
Governor Abiodun owes the party clarity. He owes stakeholders direction. His continued silence benefits no one, least of all himself. A governor who cannot shape his own succession appears weak. A governor who allows external operators to dictate terms within his state appears irrelevant.
Political smoke clears. When it does, everyone sees what was always there: operators trying to bypass democratic process, trying to impose external candidates on a state with its own capable sons and daughters, trying to manufacture consent through media manipulation.
The stakeholders have seen through it. We reject it completely. Senator Adeola Yayi will never be imposed on Ogun State. The schemers behind this phantom consensus can withdraw now before they do irreparable damage, or they can double down and discover just how little tolerance remains for these games.
Governor Abiodun must decide: Will he lead, or will he watch as others write the story of his succession?
The party deserves better. Ogun State deserves better. The democratic process deserves better.
