- Ten prominent All Progressives Congress governorship aspirants in Kwara State have written a joint petition to President Bola Tinubu, declaring that Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq has lost the moral and political authority to direct the party’s future ahead of the 2027 elections.
- The aggrieved aspirants warned that the ruling party faces total electoral collapse in the state due to systemic marginalization and the alleged imposition of the Speaker of the House of Assembly, Yakubu Danladi-Salihu, via fraudulent consensus arrangements.
- In a swift counter-response, the governor’s media team dismissed the petition as misplaced, asserting that Danladi-Salihu won a valid party primary on May 22 and has already secured President Tinubu’s endorsement, urging the aggrieved aspirants to embrace dialogue.
A massive political crisis has hit the Kwara State chapter of the All Progressives Congress as ten frontline governorship aspirants joined forces to challenge Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq’s control over the state’s political structure.
Eko Hot Blog reports that in a highly charged petition addressed directly to President Bola Tinubu at the Presidential Villa in Abuja, the high-profile coalition warned that the ruling party risks a disastrous internal collapse ahead of the 2027 general elections.
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The prominent signatories include Senator Saliu Mustapha, Senator Yahaya Ibrahim Oloriegbe, Barrister Dele Belgore (SAN), Ambassador Yahaya Seriki Gambari, Dr. Bashir Omolaja Bolarinwa, Dr. Oluwatoyin Tajudeen Alabi, Capt. Ahmad Mahmud, Alhaji Tajudeen Audu, Dr. Azeez Salako Muideen Olaniyi, and Hon. Omar Muhammed Bio.
The aspirants declared that the wide-ranging progressive coalition that powered the historic 2019 “Otoge” movement has been completely fractured by the governor’s exclusionary administrative style.
The immediate catalyst for the internal revolt is a highly controversial consensus arrangement engineered by state actors to favor the incumbent Speaker of the Kwara State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Yakubu Danladi-Salihu, as the party’s designated standard-bearer.
The aggrieved aspirants strongly faulted the selection process, describing it as a scripted fraud driven by backroom arrangements that completely shut out critical party stakeholders.
According to the petitioners, the state government announced results for governorship primaries that never actually took place on the ground, creating deep-seated animosity across the state’s 193 wards.
They noted that over the past seven years, dedicated party stalwarts who invested heavy financial and political capital to build the APC in Kwara have been systematically alienated, thereby severely shrinking the party’s grassroots support base and exposing it to an aggressive resurgence by opposition forces.
The petitioners explicitly appealed to President Tinubu to take a sober, critical look at the irregularities in Kwara State and intervene directly before the internal friction ruins the party’s prospects in all upcoming elections, including the 2027 presidential polls.
They urged the presidency to review the grassroots capacity and statewide acceptability of all contenders to forge a genuinely inclusive consensus choice, promising to dissolve their separate structures and rally completely behind any candidate chosen through a fair executive review.
They maintained that any candidate bearing Governor AbdulRazaq’s unilateral endorsement would enter the polls under a massive electoral disadvantage due to the governor’s sharply declining public popularity.
Responding swiftly to the heavy allegations on Friday, the Senior Special Assistant on Communication to Governor AbdulRazaq, Ibraheem Abdullateef, fiercely defended the candidate selection process, dismissing the coalition’s demands as unconstructive.
Abdullateef insisted that a peaceful and credible primary contest was conducted by an Abuja-delegated panel led by Senator Musiliu Obanikoro, where Danladi-Salihu cleanly secured 94,990 votes to defeat his rivals.
He further argued that President Tinubu had already received the Speaker at the state house and officially endorsed his 2027 governorship candidacy, rendering any calls for a cancellation or reversal entirely misplaced.
Urging the disgruntled politicians to cease public hostilities, the government house asserted that the ticket was fairly zoned to Kwara North to ensure regional equity, and called on all factions to return to the table for structural concessions rather than dragging the presidency into local party contests.
