Pick First, Beg Later: Why the APC’s Dangerous Playbook Will Fail Oyo State Again

By: Olagoke Ayeni
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‎A purported 2027 candidate list, allegedly linked to a familiar party figure, has surfaced, and it carries the unmistakable scent of the same imposition that fractured the APC in 2023. The party tried that script before, dressed the wound with reconciliation, and still lost. Repeating it in 2027 is not strategy. It is surrender.
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‎There is a mindset quietly taking hold in certain quarters of the APC in Oyo State, a mindset that is as familiar as it is fatal. It goes like this: pick the candidate we want, manage the fallout, beg those who feel aggrieved, hold a reconciliation press conference, and then go into the election hoping the party faithful will swallow their grievances in the interest of victory. That mindset has now found a concrete expression.

A purported list of APC candidates for the 2027 general elections, projecting Sen. Sharafadeen Alli as governorship candidate and Mr. Soji Adedeji as his running mate, with names already slotted into senatorial and House of Representatives seats across the state, has surfaced and is being widely circulated. The list is allegedly linked to the NRS boss, Mr. Zach Adedeji. Whether or not it is authentic, its mere existence and circulation is a symptom of exactly the problem that must be confronted: the belief that a few individuals can pre-determine the fate of an entire party and a whole state, and that everyone else will simply fall in line.
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‎The evidence of where this leads is not distant or abstract. It is as recent as 2023, the year the APC in Oyo State gave Nigerians the spectacle known as “Jagba ko jegba.” That exercise, widely seen as an imposition clothed in the garments of a primary, produced not a united party but a fractured one. Key figures felt sidelined. Structures that should have been energised were instead alienated. The reconciliation that followed was loud, well-photographed and almost entirely hollow. The party went into the governorship election carrying the dead weight of its own internal grievances, and Governor Seyi Makinde, a far less divided opponent, walked through the gap. The question today is a pointed one: has the lesson been learned, or is the APC in Oyo State preparing to take that same bitter examination again?
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‎Let the record be clear about what post-imposition reconciliation actually is. It is optics. It is a managed performance staged for the cameras, handshakes between men who have not forgiven each other, joint declarations from stakeholders who will work at half-capacity come election day, and unity communiqués that fool no one, least of all the grassroots party members whose enthusiasm is the actual engine of any campaign. The aggrieved do not forget because they attended a reconciliation dinner. They show up on election day, if at all they show up, without fire, without commitment, and without the willingness to mobilise their networks. In a state as competitive as Oyo, that half-hearted participation is the difference between winning and losing. A pre-packaged list, however neatly assembled, cannot substitute for that organic energy.
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‎Those who believe they can slot names into governorship, senatorial and House of Representatives positions from the comfort of private influence, and then repair the damage of exclusion afterwards, are operating on a dangerous illusion. Political trust, once broken in the primary process, is not restored by a press statement. The candidate who emerges from imposition carries that original sin into the campaign, and every voter who hears whispers of how the ticket was procured becomes harder to convince. In Oyo State, where political memory is long and word travels fast, those whispers become a roar long before polling day. It is worth noting that the circulated list itself has not been confirmed by the APC leadership, which means it already carries the twin liabilities of illegitimacy and suspicion, precisely the conditions under which internal fractures are born.
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‎The APC has a genuine opportunity in 2027, but only if it learns what 2023 was trying to teach it. Jagba was not just a failed candidacy; it was a warning. The lesson is not complicated: inclusion before the primary is the only reconciliation that actually works. A process that carries the party’s key stakeholders along from the very beginning, that consults, accommodates and produces a flagbearer with real cross-zonal legitimacy, needs no reconciliation afterwards, because there is no wound to dress. Whether Senator Sharafadeen Alli, or any other name on the circulated list, is ultimately the right candidate for Oyo State is a question the party’s members and structures must answer through a process that is open, credible and broadly accepted. The self-appointed gatekeepers must decide whether they want the photograph of unity or the reality of it. Only one of those wins elections. And only one of those is good for Oyo State.