The recent All Progressives Congress (APC) primary has thrown up a lot of issues about loyalty and betrayal; leadership and mentoring; weight of grassroots strength vis a vis political alignment to ranking officers; and the question of timing – for how long should you serve your oga and when is good enough time to stand up for yourself!
This particular Agege story is not new. It is a familiar script in Lagos politics and across Nigeria. This chapter only again re-echoes the old tension that is often never resolved but blanketed.
On one side of the political tug of war stands the old warhorse, Mudashiru Obasa and his mentee, Ganiyu Egunjobi invoking loyalty, sacrifice, and the long years of party construction; and on the other, a youthful bloc led by Gbenga Abiola increasingly convinced that political legitimacy must now be measured by grassroots resonance rather than tenure alone. That friction, as uncomfortable as it is, is part of our living political ecosystem in Nigeria.
This Agege Constituency 01 seat for the Lagos House of Assembly will perhaps be the most difficult riddle for the APC leadership in Lagos to solve in this political season. This is as both sides are presenting their respective “evidences” from wards and are claiming rigid positions of victory.
There is almost 100% assurance that whoever gets the party nod will win the state legislative seat. The headache for party leadership would likely then be who of these 2, Ganiyu Egunjobi and Gbenga Abiola – both former Agege Council bosses and mentees of Mudashiru Obasa, one still committed and the latter now considered a renegade – can keep the party’s machinery running without breaking it.
Agege is waiting!
#YeahMomentsWithYO!