By Dare Adeniran
There appears to be fire on the mountain in the Oyo State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC), as the party’s latest reconciliation efforts following its governorship primary and other internal contests have continued to raise questions about whether the exercise is a genuine attempt to heal deep-seated wounds or merely a cosmetic political arrangement ahead of the 2027 elections.
Although some aggrieved aspirants and influential members have reportedly been brought together with the party’s governorship candidate, Senator Sharafadeen Alli, the bigger question remains whether the reconciliation has gone deep enough to address the grievances that have accumulated over several years or whether APC is once again postponing the inevitable by creating an outward appearance of unity while serious disagreements remain beneath the surface.
For a party that has twice suffered the consequences of internal division in the 2019 and 2023 governorship elections, the issue should not be treated as another routine political disagreement.
Oyo APC has a history of factional disputes, leadership struggles, parallel interests, candidate-selection controversies and disagreements over who controls the party structure, and many of those unresolved issues have continued to influence the fortunes of the party from one election cycle to another.
Indeed, the roots of the present situation go much further back than the current leadership of APC. They can be traced through the political evolution of the progressive bloc in Oyo State, from the Alliance for Democracy (AD) tradition to the Alliance for Democracy’s successor formations, the Action Congress (AC), the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), and eventually the historic merger that produced APC in 2013.
That transition was expected to unite different political tendencies under one formidable platform, particularly ahead of the 2015 general elections, but the merger also brought together politicians with different backgrounds, ambitions, structures and loyalties.
In Oyo, the old political differences did not disappear simply because the parties adopted a new name, and the tensions that had characterised the progressive camp gradually resurfaced within APC.
During the ACN era, particularly around the emergence of the late former Governor Abiola Ajimobi as the party’s governorship candidate, Oyo politics became heavily influenced by competing political tendencies associated with different leaders and structures.
The divisions later became more pronounced, with the camps popularly identified with Lamidi Adesina and Ajimobi, often described as the “Lamists” and “SENACO”, respectively, reflecting the extent to which personality, loyalty and political structures had become intertwined with the fortunes of the progressive movement in the state.
Ajimobi eventually defeated the incumbent Governor Adebayo Alao-Akala in 2011 and secured a second term in 2015, giving APC and its predecessor political structures a period of considerable dominance.
Yet beneath that electoral success were unresolved questions about inclusion, succession, leadership and the distribution of political influence, which would later become significant factors in the party’s troubles.
By the build-up to the 2019 election, those cracks had become impossible to ignore, as disagreements within APC produced competing tendencies and the emergence of the Unity Forum, with several influential members openly challenging the direction of the party.
What followed was a bitter internal struggle that exposed how deeply factionalism had eaten into the structure of the ruling party.
The eventual outcome was devastating. APC lost the Oyo governorship election to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and Seyi Makinde, despite having controlled the state for eight years, while Makinde won an overwhelming majority of the local government areas.
For many observers, the result was not simply a victory for PDP but a powerful demonstration of what internal division can do to a governing party that enters an election with its political house divided.
Rather than allowing that defeat to become a permanent lesson, however, APC continued to struggle with internal reconciliation and leadership disputes.
Efforts were made at different times to bring estranged members together, including reconciliation initiatives associated with former Governor Ajimobi and other senior figures, but the death of Ajimobi in 2020 and later that of Alao-Akala in 2022 further altered the political landscape and deprived the party of some of the personalities who had played significant roles in managing its competing interests.
The 2023 election offered another opportunity for APC to rebuild, but the party again found itself entangled in disputes over its governorship ticket, leadership and internal alignment.
The emergence of Teslim Folarin as the party’s candidate did not completely resolve the divisions, while the defection of prominent figures and the existence of competing political interests weakened the party’s ability to present itself as a united alternative to Makinde and the PDP.
APC lost again, and the defeat should have forced a fundamental rethink of how the party manages internal disagreements, chooses candidates and accommodates members who may have different political ambitions but remain essential to its electoral strength.
Instead, as the party moves towards 2027, there are growing concerns that history may be repeating itself, particularly following the controversies surrounding the latest governorship primary and the consensus approach adopted by the party.
Several aspirants who had invested their political resources, networks and personal ambitions in the governorship contest were understandably disappointed by the eventual outcome, while some questioned whether the process adequately reflected the principles of internal democracy and equal opportunity.
Although the emergence of Alli has now become a political reality, the grievances generated during the process cannot simply disappear because a candidate has emerged.
This is where the present reconciliation exercise becomes extremely important. Reconciliation is necessary, but reconciliation that is limited to bringing a few prominent personalities before cameras for handshakes and photographs may not be enough to repair a structure that has been weakened at its foundation.
APC needs to understand that the aggrieved members are not limited to those who contested the governorship primary.
Across the senatorial districts, local government areas and wards, there are party members who believe they have been ignored, sidelined or treated as politically irrelevant, while some foundation members who helped build the party’s structures may now feel that their contributions have been forgotten.
That perception can be dangerous because political relevance is not determined only by the position a person occupies today. Someone who does not currently hold an elective office may have an extensive grassroots network, influence within a community or the ability to mobilise hundreds or thousands of voters during an election, and dismissing such a person because he or she is not currently considered powerful could prove costly when the ballots are counted.
Politics is about numbers, structures and relationships, and no individual, regardless of how powerful or popular, can win a governorship election alone.
The Yoruba proverb, “Igi kan o le dagbo se,” meaning that one tree cannot make a forest, aptly captures the situation confronting Oyo APC as it prepares for another difficult electoral battle.
What the current body language of some party leaders appears to suggest, however, is that certain members may no longer be considered sufficiently relevant to the party’s calculations, and that is a dangerous signal at a time when APC needs virtually every available political structure.
A party preparing for a governorship election should not be asking only who controls the biggest political office; it should also be asking who can deliver votes in a ward, who can mobilise young people, who has influence among women, who commands respect in traditional communities and who can persuade undecided voters to support the party.
Oyo politics has never been that simple. The state has historically been shaped by strong personalities, competing political interests, regional considerations and intricate grassroots structures, with Ibadan playing an enormous role while Oke-Ogun, Ogbomoso, Oyo, Ibarapa and other constituencies remain critical components of any statewide political calculation.
Successful political leaders in the past understood that winning Oyo requires building bridges across these interests rather than assuming that one bloc, one personality or one political structure can carry the entire state.
Unfortunately, the failure to sufficiently accommodate competing interests has repeatedly produced political consequences, and APC’s experiences in 2019 and 2023 should serve as reminders of the price that internal rancour can exact.
The party cannot afford to enter another election with some of its members campaigning publicly while others quietly withdraw their structures and support behind the scenes.
This is particularly important because an aggrieved politician does not necessarily have to leave the party before becoming politically consequential.
A foundation member may remain an APC member but refuse to mobilise for the party; a former aspirant may attend meetings without deploying his structure; a ward leader may maintain his membership while quietly withholding the political machinery that once worked for the party; and a loyal supporter who feels abandoned may simply decide to stay away from the campaign.
Such silent disengagement could be more damaging than an open defection because it may remain invisible until election day.
For the APC governorship candidate, therefore, the work ahead extends far beyond securing the party ticket.
Senator Alli and the other flag bearers emerging from the party’s various primaries must embark on a genuine healing process that reaches every layer of the party, because victory in 2027 will depend not merely on the popularity of individual candidates but on whether those candidates can convince thousands of disappointed members that they still have a stake in the APC project.
President Bola Tinubu’s 2027 re-election ambition also gives the matter a wider dimension. Oyo APC cannot realistically expect to deliver an impressive presidential vote while its state structure remains divided, because the same grassroots machinery required to win the governorship election is largely the machinery that must be deployed to mobilise support for the President.
That means the reconciliation effort should not be treated as a public-relations exercise designed to calm criticism temporarily.
It must become a deliberate political process involving genuine dialogue, concessions, inclusion and the restoration of trust among members who feel betrayed or excluded.
Every major aspirant who contested the governorship primary deserves to be engaged, but the process should not stop there.
Former candidates, foundation members, former party executives, serving and former political office holders, ward leaders, youth and women leaders, grassroots mobilisers and other influential members whose structures can make a difference at election time must all be brought into the conversation.
The party must also avoid the temptation to confuse loyalty with silence. A member who raises concerns should not automatically be regarded as an enemy, just as a politician who disagrees with the leadership should not be permanently marked for exclusion.
Healthy political parties survive because they possess mechanisms for managing disagreements, not because they pretend disagreements do not exist.
If APC is serious about winning the Oyo governorship election in 2027, it must therefore go beyond what increasingly looks to some observers like cosmetic reconciliation and confront the real issues responsible for the party’s repeated crises.
The leadership needs to acknowledge that the wounds are deep, the aggrieved are many and the political consequences of ignoring them could be severe.
Time may already be running out, but it is not yet too late for the party to change course. APC still has enough political structures, experienced politicians, grassroots operators and national connections to mount a formidable challenge, but those assets will only become useful if they are brought together under a credible and inclusive strategy.
What can make or break APC in 2027 may ultimately not be the strength of its opponents but the quality of its internal management.
Makinde, alongside his loyalists, will undoubtedly defend their political territory with everything available to them, while other parties and emerging political coalitions will also seek to exploit any weakness within the APC.
Consequently, the party’s leadership must understand that winning Oyo cannot be achieved by celebrating reconciliation at the top while grievances continue to simmer at the bottom.
The governorship candidate, senatorial candidates, House of Representatives candidates, state assembly candidates and every other flag bearer must be made to understand that there is no room for selective mobilisation in a party that wants to win.
Nobody should be left behind, nobody should be deliberately ignored and nobody who possesses genuine electoral value should be written off merely because he or she is currently outside the inner circle of power.
Oyo APC has been here before, and the consequences of its previous internal battles remain visible in the political history of the state.
The tragedy would be for the party to repeat the same mistakes while believing that another round of meetings, endorsements and public displays of unity has solved the problem.
If the present leadership truly wants to change the party’s fortunes, this is the moment to learn from 2019 and 2023, confront the mistakes of the past and build a political family broad enough to accommodate divergent interests without sacrificing the collective objective.
Otherwise, what appears today to be a manageable disagreement could become a full-blown electoral crisis tomorrow, and by the time APC realises that every political structure matters, some of the people it ignored may already have decided where their loyalty — or their silence — will be felt on election day.
Dare Adeniran, publisher of trendscopenews.com.ng, writes
plausible08@gmail.com
