What is playing out within the Ogun State chapter of the APC today is not ideology, loyalty, or even strategy, it is survival politics in the shadow of a fast-approaching lame-duck governorship.
Around the outgoing Governor Dapo Abiodun, anxiety is thick in the air. Allies are restless, aides are edgy, and loyalists are suddenly discovering “new political visions.” This sudden burst of territorial ambition is not accidental. It is a reaction.
Those close to the corridors of power understand one brutal truth: the moment DA loses firm control of the ticket, the tap runs dry.
Abiodun has never been known for largesse outside election seasons. Gratifications, appointments, and political goodwill have always followed one logic. what is the electoral value? Once the road ahead narrows and victory looks unlikely, history shows he retreats, disengages, and begins to focus on life after Oke-Mosan, including whatever remains in the state’s coffers to finance a post-governorship lifestyle far removed from party trenches.
That reality explains today’s desperation.
Those orbiting the Governor know that once he exits office, there is little political or material value left to extract. No structure to inherit. No influence to leverage. No safety net to fall back on. And so, they scramble not to build the party, but to secure bargaining chips for life after DA.
This panic has now spilled into what should be the party’s stabilising backbone: the women’s wing.
Multiple women groups have suddenly surfaced, each claiming legitimacy, each pushing a slightly different narrative, and each clearly aligned to competing power centres within the same government.
One faction, reportedly linked to Hon. Funmi Afuwape, Commissioner for Special Duties and firmly in Abiodun’s camp, is said to be flying the banner of Apex Women for APC – a platform carefully choreographed to promote a joint political destiny between the Governor and Senator Solomon Adeola (Yayi).
Then came the counter-move.
Another structure, Apex Women for Tinubu/DA, allegedly backed by a newly elected House of Representatives member also close to the Governor, emerged to push a more aggressive thesis: that only Dapo Abiodun has the divine right to determine who flies the APC governorship ticket in Ogun State.
That message is not subtle. It is a warning.
It tells aspirants: brand all you want, mobilise all you can, nothing counts without the Governor’s nod. Yet paradoxically, the very people amplifying this narrative are already positioning themselves to survive after his influence wanes.
This contradiction exposes the rot.
What we are witnessing is not unity but controlled fragmentation. Not loyalty but pre-emptive defection planning. The women’s wing, traditionally a force for cohesion and grassroots mobilisation, is now being weaponised as a chessboard for succession battles.
The implication is grave.
As aides, commissioners, lawmakers, and political hangers-on quietly align with the “next sheriff in town,” the Ogun APC is becoming increasingly toxic, riddled with parallel structures, overlapping loyalties, and silent betrayals.
The Governor may still occupy the seat, but power is already leaking away.
And in Ogun politics, once a governor becomes a lame duck, everyone starts learning how to fly alone.
Seun Olagunsoye is a public analyst write this piece from Ijebu-Ode.