Ogun 2023: Dapo Abiodun in last-minute effort to save his job

Governor Dapo Abiodun of Ogun State is not leaving anything to chance in order to retain the governorship seat for another four years.

Abiodun, who is the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, has two major rivals dragging the Oke-Mosan governor’s office with him, and is ready to fight till the end.

Since the Osun 2022 governorship election went the way of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Gov Abiodun has changed tactics.

He is keen to avoid the Oyetola treatment.

As the governor completed projects, he initiated new ones, while promising to make Ogun State a better place for all. He said he could not do everything, but he would do the ones he promised to do.

However, despite all the governor is doing, his opponents are hellbent on unseating him at the completion of his tenure on May 29, 2023.

In the PDP, Ladi Adebutu and Abiodun’s closest rival in 2019, Adekunle Akinlade joined forces to build a formidable opposition that could uproot the ruling party. Initially, many didn’t take the Ogun PDP seriously until the party became boosted with the arrival of Akinlade and his followers.

There are allegations that the Ogun APC sponsored many court cases against the PDP to stop it from being on the ballot in the 2023 polls, but the PDP won all the court cases from the High Court to the Supreme Court.

Another source of worry to the governor is the fact that Adebutu is more or less his kinsman from the same Iperu community. In the February 25 presidential and parliamentary elections, Abiodun lost two of the ballots to the PDP in his polling unit. While he won the presidential election, he lost the senatorial and House of Representatives polls to the PDP. In fact, political thugs had to ‘wade in’ to prevent the votes of the second polling booth at the unit from being counted.

Aside from Adebutu, Abiodun also had Biyi Otegbeye of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) to contend with. Though Otegbeye and his party should not have been a major concern to Abiodun, the weight behind the only Ogun West candidate is too heavy to be ignored.

News men recalls that the former Ogun governor, Ibikunle Amosun, had earlier threatened that Abiodun must be removed. To achieve this, Amosun ‘unleashed’ Otegbeye against Abiodun, who is the candidate of his party.

The APC and the Labour Party had earlier dragged Otegbeye to court to stop him from contesting. The judgement of an Abeokuta Federal High Court had once stopped Otegbeye, but since the Ibadan Appeal Court reinstated him as the candidate, Amosun has been leading his campaign to all the nooks and crannies of Ogun State like a rural evangelist preaching the gospel.

Truly, the February 25 elections favoured the governor as the APC won all the three senatorial and nine House of Representatives seats in Ogun.

Nonetheless, political observers in the State have said the bandwagon votes were as a result of Bola Tinubu’s candidacy.

It seems the governor is aware of this as he is not leaving any stone unturned to woo as many people to his side.

Meanwhile, it seems all is not well between the governor and former governor Gbenga Daniel, who just won the Ogun East senatorial election.