The Osun State governor, Ademola Adeleke, has berated the national chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Abdullahi Ganduje, over his plot to ensure his party takes over Osun and Oyo states, following the party’s disputable gubernatorial victory in Ondo State.
Ganduje on Sunday had announced APC’s plans to dominate the Southwestern states.
The bold move aims to solidify APC’s presence in the region, he noted.
With its victory in Ondo, Ganduje is confident that APC can secure power in all Southwestern states.
“Our next target now is this geo-political zone, the Southwest geopolitical zone,” he said.
He had expressed confidence in the party’s ability to hit its targets, particularly in Southwest Nigeria and commitment to securing victories in the remaining states in the region.
Reacting via a statement issued by his spokesperson, Olawale Rasheed, Adeleke argued that Ganduje’s statement was intended to destabilise the southwest region and incite conflict.
“As a well-read politician, one would have expected Dr Ganduje to know that electoral contests depend mostly on local indexes and factors and that what obtains in Edo and Ondo are surely different from political facts on the ground in Osun state.
“If Dr Ganduje truly loves Mr President, why is he pushing to destabilise the president’s home zone through open threats to violate electoral law and deny the electorate their rights to vote and be voted for? By threatening to hijack opposition states, the APC leader is undermining the general consensus among Yoruba people which accept Mr President as their own irrespective of political differences.
“If however the statement of the APC leader is borne out of ignorance, he is invited to study Osun politics to get better informed of the dynamics of this state’s politics and to appreciate that what works in Edo and Ondo cannot play out here for several reasons.
“In Osun State, the ruling party, the PDP is daily receiving thousands of decampees from opposition parties. The PDP in Osun is already a strong mass movement which cannot be overrun by a party chairman who failed to deliver his own state and who does not have the mandate of Mr President to ignite conflict in the South West zone.
“The PDP in Osun state is too deeply planted to be threatened or suppressed by any electoral robber and Governor Adeleke remains an extraordinarily popular leader whose mandate now or in 2026 cannot be hijacked by anti-democratic forces,” the spokesperson noted.