Fresh tension is brewing within the All Progressives Congress in Oyo State following the emergence of former deputy governor, Moses Alake Adeyemo, as the new state chairman of the party.
Adeyemo was announced chairman at the party’s state congress held at the Liberty Stadium in Ibadan on Tuesday, in an exercise supervised by a congress committee constituted by the party’s national leadership in Abuja.
His emergence, however, has drawn sharp reactions from a leading aspirant for the chairmanship seat and some stakeholders in the Oke-Ogun zone.
One of the leading chairmanship aspirants, Dele Akinleye from Itesiwaju Local Government Area, who spoke to westernmirror.com.ng in an exclusive media chat after the Congress, expressed dissatisfaction with the outcome of the congress, warning that it could trigger another internal crisis in the party.
“I am not comfortable with the outcome. The outcome of our congress is the beginning of another crisis in the party,” Akinleye said.
According to him, the chairmanship position had earlier been zoned to Oke-Ogun, and aspirants from the area were hopeful of a transparent consensus process.
He alleged that the zoning arrangement was manipulated and that aspirants were sidelined.
“Since the party agreed to go for consensus, we believed the 10 slots meant for Oke-Ogun would be given to our leader, Chief Iyiola Oladokun, but the committee did not do that.
“Nobody called Chief Sola Ogunbode and myself to talk to us or appeal to us. They just manipulated everything,” he stated.
Akinleye also faulted the composition of the six-member zoning committee, alleging that it lacked representation from Oke-Ogun.
“There was one person from Oyo, one from Ogbomoso, one from Ibarapa and three from Ibadan. Nobody from Oke-Ogun was in the allocation committee.
“What right did they have to allocate positions to Oke-Ogun local governments?” he queried.
When asked about his next line of action, Akinleye declined to disclose his plans, saying he would keep that to himself for now.
His position was similar to an earlier concerns raised by a group of Oke-Ogun stakeholders under the aegis of a caucus that had rejected what it described as an attempt to impose a candidate through an exclusionary zoning process.
In a statement jointly signed by its chairman, Ayantunde Akintunde, and secretary, Sola Aremu, the caucus argued that the zoning committee responsible for key recommendations had no representative from Oke-Ogun, thereby undermining fairness and internal democracy within the party.
The group demanded that all 10 slots allocated to the zone be forwarded to Chief Iyiola Oladokun to enable stakeholders in the area determine their distribution.
The controversy comes amid an earlier protest staged by Oke-Ogun indigenes at the party’s secretariat in Ibadan. The protesters, operating under the socio-cultural platform “Egbe Ajosepo fun Itesiwaju Gbogbo Wa,” opposed what they described as a recurring pattern of allocating the party chairmanship position to Oke-Ogun.
Led by its National Chairman, Dauda Olaifa, the group alleged that zoning the chairmanship to Oke-Ogun again was a strategic move that could undermine the zone’s agitation for the Oyo governorship seat in 2027.
They argued that both the party chairmanship and governorship positions should not originate from the same zone at the same time.
Olaifa maintained that a review of political developments since 1999 showed that party chairmanship positions, across major political parties including the Peoples Democratic Party, had been disproportionately domiciled in Oyo North, particularly Oke-Ogun.
“There was a time when the party chairmen of both APC and PDP were from the same town in Oke-Ogun. For over two decades, the position of party chairman across party lines has been concentrated in Oyo North,” he said.