The audacious political insult that many thought was just a rumour has finally happened. Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq has gone ahead to present members of the current Kwara State House of Assembly as the All Progressives Congress governorship candidate, deputy governorship candidate and next Speaker, a move that will go down as one of the most unprecedented democratic aberrations in Nigeria’s recent political history.
The Governor and APC leadership has imposed the current Speaker, Hon. Salihu Yakubu Danladi, as the APC governorship candidate for 2027, with Hon. Seun Ogunniyi Adato, the member representing Ojomu Balogun State Constituency, as his running mate, while another loyalist from the same House is being positioned to take over as Speaker. In effect, three members of the same Assembly that has functioned as a rubber stamp for the last seven years have now been anointed as Governor-in-waiting, Deputy-in-waiting and Speaker-in-waiting.
The 52-Youth Coalition says it has combed the political history of Nigeria and found no precedent for this. Since the amalgamation of Nigeria in 1914 and since the return to democracy in 1999, no serious political party in any state of the federation has ever fielded two serving State House of Assembly members as Governor and Deputy on the same ticket. We have seen serving Speakers become Governors, like Sheriff Oborevwori in Delta State who was Speaker when he won the PDP ticket, or Ahmadu Fintiri in Adamawa who was Speaker before becoming Governor, and Aminu Tambuwal who was Speaker of the House of Representatives before becoming Sokoto Governor. We have also seen serving Assembly members picked as Deputies, which is common because parties use it to balance geography and reward loyalty.
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But what has never happened, from Sokoto to Bayelsa and from Lagos to Borno, is a party nominating two serving colleagues who sit together in the same chamber, raise hands together, shout “Aye” together and approve executive memos without scrutiny, as Governor and Deputy at the same time. Even the most desperate party understands that you cannot build executive capacity from a legislature that has none, and no serious party fields legislative apprentices for executive leadership at once. The APC in Kwara has now created that ugly history, and it tells you everything about the bankruptcy of ideas in the ruling party. After eight years in power, the best it can offer is its classroom prefects.
This is not just any Assembly, it is arguably the most docile and least productive in the history of Kwara State. It is an Assembly where executive bills outnumber private member bills by a wide margin, where oversight is dead, where budget padding allegations are swept under the carpet and where the Governor’s voice is law. For seven years, no commissioner has been seriously scrutinized, no major project has been investigated, no loan or emergency intervention has been debated.
What then is the legislative record of Hon. Danladi and Hon. Adato to warrant leading a state like Kwara? In seven years as Speaker, Hon. Danladi cannot point to a single landmark bill that changed the life of the average Kwaran. No Kwara Youth Employment Act, no Health Insurance Reform, no Education Revitalization Law, no law to protect small businesses in Ilorin, Offa, Patigi and Kaiama, no law to reform land administration. The House under him is famous for only one thing, “Ayes have it.” Even the Standing Rules of the House were reduced to tools for silencing dissent.
And when you go to Offa, the home of Hon. David Seun Ogunniyi, the question becomes even more embarrassing. For over three years as a State Assembly member, what project worth N10 million can he point to that he facilitated in Ojomu Balogun? What major intervention, what primary healthcare centre, what road, what borehole, what empowerment scheme? Nothing, yet he served has committee chairman on power before moving to head the health committe. Yet he collects salaries, allowances, and other constituency benefits month after month. Meanwhile the Guber candidateof the PDP, Engr. Kale Kawu, a private citizen who has never touched public funds, has projects running into hundreds of millions dotting the same community of Offa and Kwara at large. Schools, water, support for artisans, scholarships and health interventions, all from personal resources. That is the difference between a technocrat with executive exposure who creates jobs and a benchwarmer who has mistaken sitting in the chamber for achievement.
The Coalition insists that this agenda is not about competence, it is about cover-up and continuity of failure. Why would a Governor want to hand over power to the same people who approved every kobo spent in the last seven years? Because they know where the bodies are buried. The demolition and opaque reconstruction of Kwara Hotel with figures that keep changing, the secretive loans that have mortgaged the future of the state, the opaque IGR figures that never add up, the school renovation contracts that peel off after one rainy season, the road and bridges bridges fund mismanagement,the substandard township roads, these were approved by this same Assembly without a single question on the floor.
An independent-minded successor would audit them. An independent successor would open the books, publish the loan agreements, invite EFCC and ICPC to look at the books, and ask why projects cost three times more in Kwara than in neighbouring states. A rubber stamp successor will protect them. A rubber stamp successor will keep the lid sealed and ensure that the files remain locked. By installing the Speaker who approved unchecked budgets as Governor and the member who never asked questions as Deputy, Governor AbdulRahman is seeking a third term by proxy. By reserving the Speakership for another member of the same clique, he intends to create a Kwara where the executive, the legislature and the soon-to-be executive are all one and the same family. That is not democracy, that is state capture and a private estate.
It is also a slap on the face of accomplished Kwarans. There are thousands of refined, accomplished Kwarans in Lagos, Abuja, Port Harcourt, London, Toronto and New York, technocrats who run multinationals, professors who run research labs, entrepreneurs who employ thousands. The message from Government House is that none of them is good enough. Only those who have perfected the art of saying “Yes Sir” are qualified to govern a state of over three million people.
The contrast with the PDP makes the APC’s failure even more glaring. While APC is recycling its rubber stamp, the PDP has gone for substance with Engr. Kale Kawu as governorship candidate, an accomplished technocrat, philanthropist and humanitarian with a private sector track record of creating jobs and delivering projects without public funds, and Rev. Fawenu as his deputy, a grassroots mobilizer who is held in high esteem by the Christian community and beyond for his integrity, humility and long years of community service. One party is presenting an executive team ready to govern from day one with a clear blueprint, the other is presenting an attendance list from a failed Assembly.
In the final analysis, the Coalition noted that Kwarans are wiser and cannot be deceived. A House that could not make a single law to lift Kwarans out of poverty cannot produce a Governor who will lift Kwara out of underdevelopment. A member who could not attract N10 million worth of development to his own constituency cannot manage a budget of over N300 billion. The people of Kwara know that governance is not an extension of “Ayes have it” and that statecraft is not legislative eye service.
The group therefore concluded that this attempt to impose rubber stamp Assembly members as governorship and deputy governorship candidates is dead on arrival. It cannot fly in Kwara, it cannot fly in Offa, it cannot fly in Ilorin, and it will be rejected at the polls by a people who have endured seven years of docile legislature and are now being asked to endure eight more years of executive docility.
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