The carefully laid plan to hand Ibikunle Amosun a clear path back to the Senate has unravelled — and the former Ogun State governor now faces the kind of contested primary he and his allies were working hard to avoid.
Party leaders in Ogun Central Senatorial District had moved to present Amosun as the consensus candidate, which would have required every other aspirant to step down and sign formal withdrawal letters. It was a clean solution on paper. In practice, it ran straight into a wall of refusals.
Among those who declined to step aside are names with real political weight: Lanre Tejuoso, a former senator; Olumide Osoba, a serving member of the House of Representatives; Biodun Akinlade, a former lawmaker; and Salako Adeyemi. These are not fringe figures. They have grassroots structures, delegate networks, and enough confidence in their own standing to look a consensus request in the face and say no.
The reasons behind the resistance are not hard to understand. Several aspirants reportedly questioned the logic of stepping down for a former governor who has already served in the Senate — a man who, by most measures, has had his turn. The language of internal democracy surfaced in the conversations, and once that argument takes hold, it is difficult to push back against without looking like the party is being managed rather than governed.
The political backdrop makes this more complicated. Governor Dapo Abiodun’s influence over the Ogun APC structure is well established and expected to be a factor when primaries eventually hold. How that influence plays out in a multi-candidate field — currently scheduled for May 22, 2026 — is one of the more interesting questions in Ogun State politics right now.
A split field is, by definition, unpredictable. Votes that might have consolidated behind a single challenger could fragment across four or five candidates, potentially benefiting Amosun even without the consensus arrangement. Or they could not. That uncertainty is exactly what the consensus plan was designed to eliminate — and now it is back on the table.
Amosun’s Senate comeback is still possible. It is just no longer straightforward.
