The Mathematics of Power in Lagos APC

Some reunions happen in hushed rooms, and others unfold under chandeliers. On Tuesday, October 21, 2025, Lagos politics staged one of the latter. At Eko Hotel and Suites, Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu presided over a gathering of the All Progressives Congress (APC) elite, a rare tableau that placed three generations of Lagos governors in one frame.

Akinwunmi Ambode came. Babatunde Fashola came. And Sanwo-Olu, once Ambode’s political heir and then his quiet usurper, played host. Around them sat the old guard: Mutiu Are, Tajudeen Olusi, James Faleke, Tokunbo Abiru, and the Speaker, Mudashiru Obasa. The city’s power architects filled the hall with polite laughter and political perfume.

Officially, it was a stakeholders’ forum. Unofficially, it was arithmetic. Lagos APC has entered a season of calculation, and everyone is counting something, whether loyalty, leverage, or the length of political memory.

As observers have noted, for Ambode, who disappeared from the political stage after losing his re-election bid in 2019, his appearance was more than symbolic. It hinted at a slow return, or at least a re-entry into the conversation.

The photos from the event tell their own story: Ambode smiling beside Fashola, the crowd half-staring, half-whispering. On social media, the mood was a blend of nostalgia and mischief. “Ambode is coming back,” one comment read. “Winning team for Baba Tinubu,” another declared. Others were less kind, proof that in Lagos politics, love and resentment share the same seat.

What unites them all, though, is calculation. Lagos APC knows its future depends on old bridges holding firm, and new ones being built before the next storm. In this regard, commentators are correct to say that the forum was less about speeches than about signals.

By the end, the hall emptied, the math unfinished. But in a city where politics doubles as performance art, the image of three governors sitting side by side may be the clearest equation yet: power in Lagos is rarely lost; it only changes hands until the next count.