… seem so for now! Let’s wait & see how he would respond or manuevre back into relevance in the power play with PDA!
To declare that the distinguished Senator Otunba Gbenga Daniel has been politically extinguished would be premature, almost careless. But to ignore the chilling precision of what has just unfolded would be even more naive.
What played out in Ijebu-Ode was not mere party routine. It was choreography. Cold, calculated, & devastatingly effective.
Within the evolving theatre of the All Progressives Congress in Ogun State, power is no longer being negotiated in whispers, it is being asserted in broad daylight. And in that moment, the balance tilted unmistakably toward Prince Dapo Abiodun, the incumbent Governor of Ogun State.
The so-called “endorsement” of the sitting governor for the Ogun East Senatorial seat was less about consensus & more about conquest. Its setting, its timing, its actors, even its exclusions, spoke louder than the official communiqué ever could. A gathering of stakeholders where the incumbent senator is locked out is not an oversight; it is a message.
Delivered without ambiguity.
And the message? The structure has moved.
For a man of OGD’s pedigree, former governor, seasoned operator, master of the long game, the symbolism cuts deep.
Power in Nigerian politics is as much about perception as it is about numbers. To be absent in such a defining moment is to be spoken for… without speaking.
Yet, beneath the surface, a more intricate bargain appears to have been struck.
By aligning with Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola as the party’s gubernatorial spearhead for 2027, Governor Abiodun has made a choice that is both pragmatic & revealing. Legacy, in this instance, bows to longevity.
The pursuit of a Senate seat offers continuity of relevance, an insurance policy in a system where yesterday’s kingmaker can quickly become tomorrow’s footnote.
In that equation, OGD becomes the inconvenient constant, respected, rooted, but now standing in the path of a carefully plotted succession-exit strategy.
And so, he is being edged out.
Not with noise, but with method.
But here is where the script resists a tidy conclusion.
Because Senator Gbenga Daniel is not a political amateur to be dispatched with a single stroke. He is, by instinct & history, a survivor of shifting tides. The Remo axis still hums with his influence. His networks, though tested, are not extinguished. And in Nigerian politics, exile is often temporary, reinvention is the real currency.
What we are witnessing, then, is not an ending. It is an inflection point.
For now, Prince Dapo Abiodun MFR, holds the initiative, having executed a move, a bold chess move, that is as bold as it is polarizing. But such moves, while decisive, are rarely without consequence.
Power seized too tightly can provoke resistance just as fierce as the ambition that drove it.
The question is no longer whether OGD has been displaced.
It is whether he chooses to absorb the blow… or detonate a response that redraws the entire map.
Because in this game, silence is never surrender. It is often the prelude.
What are we to expect?
