The National Chairman of the All Progressive Congress (APC), Dr Umar Ganduje, has been described as suffering from “verbal diarrhea and swollen ego with an agenda to destabilize the South West zone and create a crisis for Mr President at the home front.”

“Dr Ganduje is clearly unhappy with the peace and united front behind Mr President from the South West zone and has now launched vicious attacks to ignite regional political battles to weaken the President ahead of 2027,” Spokesperson to Governor Ademola Adeleke, Mallam Olawale Rasheed, said Monday in a statement.

Reacting to the vow by Ganduje to hijack Osun in 2026, Rasheed said: “The anti-democratic utterances of the APC leader contrast sharply with the democratic credentials of President Bola Ahmed Tinibu.” He wondered why the APC leader “speaks like an amateur dictator without respect for history.”

According to Rasheed, “As a well-read politician, one would have expected Dr Ganduje to know that electoral contests depend mostly on local indexes and factors and that what obtains in Edo and Ondo are surely different from political facts on ground in Osun state.

“Local permutations, grievances and interests dictate how people vote rather than superimposed force, the Spokesperson noted, citing the failure of the APC leader to win Kano state governorship race for his party.

“In Kano, the local peculiarities enforced the subsisting victory of the Kwankwasiyya group which beat the Ganduje caucus which was in office for eight years.

“If Ganduje failed in his own state because internal forces rejected his brand of politics, why is he thinking Osun factors which enthroned Governor Adeleke would not resist any attempt to disrespect the will of Osun people in 2026?”

According to the Spokesperson, Osun state is the cradle of Yoruba people where political freedom is cherished and where resistance to electoral fraud is a strong tradition, describing Dr Ganduje as “a threat to democracy and an insider enemy of President Tinubu.

“If Dr Ganduje truly loves Mr President, why is he pushing to destabilize the president’s home zone through open threats to violate electoral law and deny the electorate their rights to vote and be voted for? By threatening to hijack opposition states, the APC leader is undermining the general consensus among Yoruba people which accept Mr President as their own irrespective of political differences.

“If however the statement of the APC leader is borne out of ignorance, he is invited to study Osun politics to get better informed of the dynamics of this state’s politics and to appreciate that what works in Edo and Ondo cannot play out here for several reasons.

“In Osun state, the ruling party, the PDP is daily receiving thousands of decampees from opposition parties. The PDP in Osun is already a strong mass movement which cannot be overrun by a party chairman who failed to deliver his own state and who does not have the mandate of Mr President to ignite conflict in the South West zone.

“The PDP in Osun state is too deeply planted to be threatened or suppressed by any electoral robber and Governor Adeleke remains an extraordinarily popular leader whose mandate now or in 2026 cannot be hijacked by anti-democratic forces”, the Spokesperson noted.