Governor Dapo Abiodun of Ogun State is orchestrating a carefully choreographed political theatre designed to deceive President Bola Tinubu into believing he commands overwhelming grassroots support within the All Progressives Congress in the state, a devastating investigation by SocietyGist can exclusively reveal.
At the heart of the scheme is a clandestine midnight meeting held on Tuesday, in which Abiodun’s operatives assembled leaders of transport unions and directed them to mobilise their members to carry placards denouncing former Governor Ibikunle Amosun, Senator Otunba Gbenga Daniel, and other prominent APC figures the governor considers political threats.
Sources with direct knowledge of the meeting, who spoke on condition of anonymity citing fear of reprisals, confirmed that the midnight gathering was deliberately timed to avoid public scrutiny and media attention. Participants were given specific instructions on the targets to be vilified and the messaging to be projected to Abuja.
The timing is no coincidence. President Tinubu is expected to visit Ogun State in the tomorrow morning, and Abiodun is racing to present himself as the unchallenged arrowhead of the APC structure in the Gateway State. The planned rally, sources say, is intended to send an unambiguous signal to the Presidency that Abiodun has tightened his grip on the party machinery and neutralised all internal opposition.
“He wants the President to see crowds and placards and conclude that the governor has popular backing,” a source told our correspondent. “But the people carrying those placards are the same union members who were mobilised even when Abiodun nearly lost the 2023 governorship election. This is not organic support. It is a purchased performance.”
Particularly damning is the revelation that the transport union loyalists being deployed now are largely the same individuals who were mobilised during Abiodun’s difficult 2023 re-election campaign, a race he scraped through amid widespread APC internal crisis, opposition from Amosun’s political machinery, and legal challenges. That Abiodun must still rely on this same narrow base of transactional supporters to project power raises serious questions about the authenticity of any popularity he claims.
Political analysts who reviewed the information say the move is symptomatic of a governor who lacks genuine party cohesion and is resorting to manufactured optics to maintain relevance before a President known to demand loyalty from those he has invested political capital in.
The decision to specifically target Amosun and Senator Gbenga Daniel in the placard campaign reveals the depth of APC’s fractured state in Ogun. Both figures retain significant political capital within different zones of the state. Amosun controls a formidable grassroots structure across Ogun Central, while OGD, representing Ogun East Senatorial District, commands loyalty among a broad coalition of political stakeholders in his zone.
Rather than build bridges within a fractious party structure, Abiodun appears to have chosen the path of confrontation, using the optics of a crowd to delegitimise rivals in the eyes of the Presidency.
Political watchers in Abeokuta describe the manoeuvre as a high-risk gamble. “Tinubu is a seasoned political strategist,” one analyst noted. “He has seen every trick in the Nigerian political playbook. Mobilising union members at midnight to carry placards the next morning does not constitute a show of force. It is a show of desperation.”
Abiodun’s media aides had not responded to requests for comment as of press time.