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From Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The hitherto almost deserted Abuja national secretariat of the All Progressives Congress (APC) practically came alive last week when the nine aspirants jostling for the party’s ticket in the forthcoming Osun State off-cycle governorship election queued up to return their completed expression of interest and nomination forms.
The physical presence of the aspirants who were completely absent during the purchase of the nomination forms turned the party’s national secretariat into an electrifying melting point for the party’s staff, Osun state stakeholders, visitors, and users of the Blantyre street, housing the national headquarters of the party.
And to underscore the gravity and importance of their mission to the secretariat to perform that mandatory legal and constitutional responsibility, the major aspirants practically left nothing to chance in their determination to outsmart each other, visibility for visibility, attention for attention, and dominance for dominance.
The build-up to the deadline day for the performance of the task of submission of the nomination forms was intensely unfriendly, cantankerous, and turbocharged, heightening the intensity and apprehension of a possible breakdown of law and order with an anticipatory imminent clash of supporters of the major gladiators contesting the ticket.
Indicating a semblance of what to expect from the aspirants and their political loyalists, the entire vicinity of the party’s national secretariat were dotted and decorated with the posters of the major aspirants, presenting them as best and favourite to ultimately pick the Osun state governorship ticket.
Expectedly, the aspirants were equally smart enough to endlessly fly the kite of presenting themselves as the anointed ones by both the presidency and the party’s stakeholders in the state, targeted at currying a superior edge and bragging rights over the other.
Although nine aspirants purchased the N50 million APC governorship nomination forms, the scaling up of the activities and apprehension for the submission of the forms, which climaxed the weekend preceding the Monday submission deadline, showed that the battle was, after all, a two-horse race, specifically between the former Managing Director, National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), Munirudeen Bola Oyebamiji, and former deputy governor of the state, Senator Iyiola Omisore.
Hundreds of supporters were hired and mobilised to the party’s headquarters to either drum up support for particular aspirants or to intimidate others and send a signal on the readiness of their principal to grab the ticket.
Long and short buses, filled to the brims with hired supposed supporters of some of the aspirants, were mobilised to the venue, just as the main gladiators expectedly arrived prepared with an intimidating convoy, hired drummers, dancers, and praise-singers to turn the gathering into an ecclesiastic, profane one that completely grounded activities at the ruling party’s headquarters almost all through the day.
Tempers had flared, allegations and counter-allegations of orchestrated plots to destabilise each other had heightened the insecurity around the secretariat, pressuring the national leadership of the ruling party, the National Working Committee (NWC), to put in place extra security measures to forestall any possible breakdown of law and order.
The intense jostling for the party’s Osun State governorship ticket is understandable. Apart from the high chances and bright opportunity for whoever emerged the ticket holder, the fact that the party has not lost any big wig to either PDP or ADC in the last three years, presented it a bright opportunity of defeating the incumbent governor of the state, Ademola Adeleke, who is practically without a clear political platform at the moment.
In what turned out to be an anti-climax of the highly-charged apprehensive situation for an anticipatory possible breakdown of law and order, the aspirants, particularly the main gladiators, surprisingly conducted their affairs peacefully, avoiding any form of the expected clash, with the perfect rescheduling of the timing for their submission of forms, perhaps through the intervention of state and national stakeholders of the party.
And when the raging apprehensive storm finally quietened down with the activities ending very late into the night, the nine aspirants had all peacefully submitted their completed nomination forms to the relevant department of the party, beating the deadline date for their returns.
By the end of the day, the aspirants who fulfilled the statutory mandate of submitting their nomination forms to the Organising department of the ruling party include: Senator Omisore, Babatunde Haketer Oralusi, Oyedotun Babayemi, Akinade Akanmu Ogunbiyi, Benedict Olugboyega Alabi, Adegoke Rasheed Okiki Adekunle, Senator Babajide Omoworare, Bola Oyebamiji, and Mulikat Abiola Jimoh.
Interestingly, the aspirants, one after the other, had doggedly tried to impress and intimidate each other with their responses, speaking on the sidelines with newsmen, as they seized the opportunity of their appearances to present their articulated policies already packaged to turn around the declining fortune of the state.
From Senator Omisore, who dismissed the insinuations about his disobeying the presidency and stakeholders of the party in the state, and discrediting the incumbent governor, describing him as unworthy to hold cabinet position under his administration, to the former NIWA boss, Oyebamiji, who made his presentation with a high sense of maturity and decorum, the activities that dominated the submission of the completed nomination forms, presented a platform of opportunity for the aspirants to prove their competence, capacity and readiness for the position.
While insisting that the state requires a leader who will bring maturity and competence at a time of current experienced drift, Omisore said: “Running for governorship comes with responsibility. My pedigree and experience are not things you can manufacture overnight. I am offering Osun a superior alternative in 2026.”
“Governance is a serious business. Any governor who turns governance into entertainment is not appreciating the weight of leadership. The projection of a dancing governor shows the emptiness of ideas. Osun deserves better. Sincerely, I can’t appoint him a Commissioner if I am the governor of the state because I don’t know what he can offer,” the former deputy governor of the state said.
He, however, hinged his decision to re-contest on conviction, capacity, and a sense of duty, boasting that no aspirant matched his depth of experience, pedigree, financial warchest, and governance exposure.
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He equally spoke on the impossibility of adopting a consensus arrangement for the primary, noting, “As of today, we have nine aspirants. Consensus is not on the table. Whoever emerges through the set process becomes the party’s candidate.”
On alleged zoning calculations and claims that he may be going against a supposed stakeholders’ preference, Omisore dismissed such narratives as “lazy political arguments,” stressing that every zone in the state has produced a governor.
In his own comments, Oyebamiji, displaying the posture of the anointed aspirant, had described himself as the man mentally and physically equipped with the requisite administrative experiences for the position, having served as the Commissioner for Finance for the state for eight years.
He said that he knows where the bones of what it will take to turn around the state are buried. Oyebamiji said: “Osun State is estimated to have a population of about five million. And we are endowed with human assets and mineral resources.
“And to drive that state to the highest pedestal, to drive these human assets together with the mineral resources, we need a manager who is focus, who has antecedents, who is credible and knowledgeable, who has character, and someone who can sign a signature.
“I, Bola Oyebamiji, am the candidate and manager that can drive Osun state with the level of credibility where every one of us can have the dividends of democracy. I present myself for the service. I have done it in the past as Commissioner for Finance, working directly with two governors. I had worked as the MD of an investment arm of the government. And the records and antecedents are there,” he said.
Oyebamiji’s superior posture is clearly understandable because the odds evidently seem to be in his favour, judging by the body language and posture of the party’s national leadership, claiming that the Elders’ Council will guide the choice of which of the aspirants will finally emerge the candidate of the party for the off-cycle governorship poll scheduled for next year.
While confirming that it will defer to the Elders’ Council in Osun State in determining the direction of the governorship primary, the party’s National Organising Secretary, Sulaiman Argungu, had assured that the party is determined to get it right in the 2026 election by respecting the guidance of the Osun Elders’ Council during the primary.
Argungu, represented by the Deputy National Organising Secretary, Nze Chidi Duru, had said: “Osun is important because it is in the South-West and part of the state we want in our fold before the 2027 general election. Also, the president has a special interest in the state. Therefore, we must get it right this time.
=“We have elders in the Osun APC, and definitely, if we concede to the elders, we won’t lose the state, and we will get it right as well,” he stated, urging Oyebamiji and his supporters to continue to conduct themselves peacefully as the primary approaches.
=The Obinna Uzor-led Screening Committee, in the report it submitted to the national leadership of the party, hinged its decision to disqualify the seven aspirants on the outcome of the petition written by the stakeholders of the party in the state.
=The committee had explained that the disqualified aspirants failed to meet the mandatory nomination requirement of being sponsored by five fully registered and financially up-to-date members from each Local Government Area (LGA) contrary to the APC Constitution and Guidelines for the 2025 governorship primary.
=The aspirants disqualified are: Senator Omisore, Babatunde Haketer Oralusi, Oyedotun Babayemi, Akinade Akanmu Ogunbiyi, Benedict Olugboyega Alabi, Adegoke Rasheed Okiki Adekunle, and Senator Babajide Omoworare, while the duo cleared to contest the primary election billed for this weekend are the former NIWA boss, Oyebamiji, and Mulikat Abiola Jimoh.
=Although there were claims of multiple reports from the committee, the one from the chairman, Obinna Uzor, had while defending the disqualifications of the six aspirants, noted: “The Committee received a petition from Osun APC Renewal Group, urging the disqualification of the two aspirants who were identified as falling short of the mandatory nominator requirements prescribed under the APC Constitution and the Party’s Guidelines for the governorship primary.
“Upon careful review, the committee found the issues raised in the petition to be weighty, substantial, and germane to the integrity of the screening process. In the interest of fairness, transparency, and uniform application of the party’s rules, the committee resolved that the concerns highlighted should not be applied selectively.
“Accordingly, the committee extended the same scrutiny to all nine aspirants, ensuring that every sponsor (nominator) of an aspirant was assessed based on compliance with Articles 9.3(i) and 31.2(ii) of the APC Constitution and paragraph 6(c) of the Guidelines. This approach guaranteed a level playing field and upheld the principles of internal party democracy,” the Committee noted in the report it submitted.
However, from the hostile reactions that have trailed the report from the disqualified aspirants, the last may not have certainly be heard about the unfolding political drama building up to the primary.
Little wonder in his official response to the disqualification, Senator Omisore had described the panel report as the jokest report of the year, expressing bitterness that people have unfortunately taken partisanship beyond politics.
Dismissing the report as a minority one, the sacked chief scribe of the ruling party said: “That panel report is the jokest report of the year. It is quite unfortunate that people have taken partisanship beyond politics. We are aware that the panel members have two, three reports. The one taken to the secretariat wasn’t the original report. As we speak today, none of us have seen their report and why we were disqualified.
“But you can know from our pedigree that the disqualification wasn’t the right word to use for us because we are germane in this thing. We are the veterans! You can see for yourself that where you have disqualified people like us in any contest, where do we go from there,” he said after taking his case to the Appeal Committee despite his posture.
