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.
In conclusion, they said, “We must state without ambiguity that if the present trajectory is allowed to continue, the electoral prospects of the APC in Kwara State in all elections (including the presidential election) will be severely imperiled. Indeed, many stakeholders may be left with no choice but to seek alternative political platforms to pursue their aspirations in 2027.”
The traditional rulers’ pilgrimage to Abuja for Danladi, but not for insecurity
Instead of dialoguing with the aggrieved aspirants and the Kwara Elders Caucus, AbdulRasaq is doing what Yoruba people call, ‘’ A ki I fi ete sile pa lapalapa’’ (one does not leave leprosy unattended to focus on treating ringworm).
AbdulRasaq, according to media reports, is planning to ferry selected first-class traditional rulers and paperweight politicians to Abuja to convince President Tinubu and the national leadership of the APC to back Danladi’s candidacy.
These are traditional rulers who did not visit Abuja when bandits turned Baruten, Kaiama, Patigi, Ifelodun, Irepodun and Edu into killing fields.
The aggrieved aspirants control more than 80% of the APC structure in Kwara State.
APC State Chairman Prince Sunday Fagbemi, who may be on AbdulRasaq’s entourage to see Tinubu, is a paperweight in Kwara politics.
Fagbemi will be roundly defeated by Dr. Bolarinwa, not just in Kwara South but even in his community, Obbo.
Both AbdulRasaq and Hon. Razak Lawal, another member of his team, will be woefully defeated by Amb. Seriki and Sen. Mustapha in Kwara Central. Danladi will not get a draw against Alh. Audu in Kwara North will lose woefully.
The court is waiting for Danladi
Danladi also has a day in court over alleged participation in both the state gubernatorial and House of Assembly primary elections.
The suit, No. FHC/ABJ/CS/1112/2026 is filed by the Citizens Awareness Against Corruption and Social Vices Initiative at the Federal High Court in Abuja.
Joined in the suit are the APC and INEC.
The plaintiff alleged that Danladi was screened and cleared and participated as an aspirant in the APC primary election for the Kwara State House of Assembly seat in the Ilesha/Gwanara Constituency, held on May 20, 2026.
He also participated in the APC governorship primary during the same election cycle.
The plaintiff is asking the court to determine whether the APC’s sponsorship and continued recognition of Danladi for two separate elective offices in the same election season are constitutional and lawful under the Electoral Act, 2026.
The plaintiff further seeks the court’s determination of whether a candidate who participated in two separate primary elections for different offices within the same electoral cycle can validly emerge as the winner of one contest while the outcome of the other remains unresolved or unpublished.
Reliefs sought by the plaintiff include asking the court to declare that Danladi’s nomination, screening, clearance and participation in both the House of Assembly and governorship primaries amount to a violation of the Electoral Act and provisions regulating party primaries and nominations.
The body also urged the court to declare his governorship aspiration and emergence as the APC candidate unlawful, unconstitutional, illegal, null and void.
The suit further seeks an order restraining INEC from accepting, publishing, recognising or retaining Danladi’s name as the APC governorship candidate if the court finds that he participated in the two primary elections simultaneously.
Way forward for Kwara APC ‘Doctrine of Necessity’ like GEJ’s case
Apart from allegations of maladministration and mismanagement of Kwara resources against AbdulRasaq and Danladi, there are countless stories of intimidation of party members, exclusion, and politics built around fear instead of trust.
It is an open secret in Kwara State that AbdulRasaq wanted Danladi at all costs for his third term, not because he loves Kwara North.
But Danladi’s candidacy is hard to sell not just to Kwarans but even in his constituency in Kwara North, because of his arrogance, immaturity, lack of exposure, lack of experience, and lack of capacity to govern a multi-ethnic state like Kwara.
Political elites and grassroots politicians in Kwara posited that if AbdulRasq is sincere about power moving to Kwara North, because they are the only zone that has not produced a governor since 1999, he should prevail on Tinubu, the APC headquarters, and the Kwara APC Elders Caucus to ask the aggrieved 10 aspirants and Danladi to bury their ambition.
Then the President and APC will invoke the doctrine of necessity, just as the national assembly did on February 9, 2010, to address a severe power vacuum caused by President Umaru Yar’Adua’s medical evacuation to Saudi Arabia.
President Yar’Adua failed to formally transmit power in writing, so the National Assembly had to invoke the doctrine of necessity to empower Vice President Goodluck Jonathan to serve as Acting President.
After invoking the doctrine of necessity in Kwara, Tinubu and APC leaders should then comb through Kwara North and headhunt for a seasoned and mature politician, who is a team player that can allay AbdulRasaq’s fears of post office prosecution, as well as be able to also carry the aggrieved 10 aspirants along in the scheme of things.
Kwara North is not lacking in capable hands.
They include the likes of Amb. Nurudeen Mohammed, the Tafida Kaiama, Senator Sadiq Suleiman Umar, Mallam Muhammad Adamu Saba, a member of the House of Representatives, Hon. Ibrahim Isa Bio, a former Minister and a former Speaker of the Kwara State House of Assembly, and
Senator Ahmed Zuruq Danmasanin Patigi.
This is the only way to stop PDP, which is waxing stronger in Kwara daily because of the own goal scored by AbdulRasaq and Danladi.
Abdulwahab Ahmed is based in Ilorin, Kwara State.
