Osun 2026: Ganduje planning to destabilise South-west -Adeleke

Governor Ademola Adeleke of Osun State has accused the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Abdullahi Ganduje, of planning to destabilise the Southwestern region of the country, and called on President Bola Tinubu to call him to order.

Mr Adeleke was reacting to a statement credited to Mr Ganduje that the party’s target is to bring both Osun and Oyo States into its fold as the remaining states being governed by the opposition Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in the region.

The APC chairman had spoken in Akure, Ondo State capital, on Sunday, shortly after the party’s candidate in the 16 November governorship election in the state, Lucky Aiyedatiwa, was declared the winner of the election.

Mr Aiyedatiwa’s victory followed a recent victory of the APC in Edo State in a tough contest between the candidates of APC and PDP.

Adeleke fires back

On Monday, the governor, who spoke through his spokesperson, Olawale Rasheed, described Mr Ganduje’s position as a threat to democracy and a plot to plunge the South West into crisis to destabilise Mr Tinubu’s “home front”.

The governor said Mr Ganduje was suffering from a “swollen ego with an agenda to destabilise the Southwest zone and create a needless crisis for President Bola Tinubu at the home front.”

He said: “Dr Ganduje is clearly unhappy with the peace and united front behind Mr President from the South West zone and has now launched vicious attacks to ignite regional political battles to weaken President Tinubu ahead of 2027.

“The anti-democratic utterances of the APC leader contrast sharply with the democratic credentials of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, wondering why the APC leader speaks like an amateur dictator without respect for history.

“As a well read politician, one would have expected Dr Ganduje to know that electoral contests depend mostly on local indices and factors and that what obtains in Edo and Ondo are surely different from political facts on ground in Osun State.”

Osun, not Edo, Ondo

The governor said local permutations, grievances, and interests dictate how people vote rather than what he described as superimposed force, noting that Mr Ganduje’s failure to win the Kano State governorship race for APC is an example of what local contexts mean in politics.

He said: “In Kano, the local peculiarities enforced the subsisting victory of the Kwankwasiyya group, which beat the Ganduje caucus, which was in office for eight years.

“If Ganduje failed in his own state because internal forces rejected his brand of politics, why is he thinking Osun factors which enthroned Governor Adeleke would not resist any attempt to disrespect the will of Osun people in 2026?

“Osun State is the cradle of Yoruba people where political freedom is cherished and where resistance to electoral fraud is a strong tradition”.

He said the party chairman truly loves Mr Tinubu he would not be 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”.

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He added: “By threatening to hijack opposition states, the APC leader is undermining the general consensus among Yoruba people, which accepts Mr President as their own irrespective of political differences.

“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 state and who does not have the mandate of Mr President to ignite conflict in the South West zone.

“The PDP in Osun 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”.