The breakup was long anticipated, thus it was not surprising when news broke last week that RaufAregbesola, former governor of Osun State, would be working with the AtikuAbubakar-led coalition with the aim of unseating President Bola Tinubu in 2027.
Aregbesola led his Omoluabi Progressives in January, a political group said to have large followership in Lagos and Osun states out of the Osun State All Progressives Congress (APC). A few years back, such stories would have seemed like a mere fairy tale.
While the real reason for the sudden breakup between the godfather and godson is still shrouded in secrecy, the genesis of their relationship which started in 1999, and how it hugely benefited the godson have been told countlessly.
Aregbesola was Tinubu’s commissioner for works and infrastructure when he was governor of Lagos State. He spent eight years as commissioner. Even after Tinubu handed over to Babatunde Fashola in 2007, the works ministry was reportedly reserved for Aregbesola, who at the time was battling to reclaim his Osun State governorship mandate at the tribunal.
Such was the solid and seeming impregnable relationship between the two that it became almost unthinkable when the story of their fight first broke. At the time, it was discussed in hushed tones across political platforms, but it became obvious that the godfather and his godson had indeed parted ways shortly before the 2023 presidential election.
But the cold war had become an all-out battle ahead of the 2022 governorship election in Osun. Governor GboyegaOyetola, Tinubu’s nephew who succeeded Aregbesola was running for a second term on the platform of the APC, the same political party on whose platform Aregbesola was minister at the time. Aregbesola’sOmoluabi group did not support the candidate of their party, and Oyetola lost to AdemolaAdeleke of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).
Before the election, Aregbesola, at the time a Minister of Interior, launched a scathing attack on Tinubu. While addressing his supporters in Ijebu-Jesa, Aregbesola said he agreed to Tinubu’s handpicked candidate as his successor in 2018 because it was agreed that he would continue the legacies he laid. He said Oyetola failed to keep the agreement.
Aregbesola said the same treatment Tinubu and his group meted out to former Lagos State governor, AkinwunmiAmbode, would be given to Oyetola because “he had derailed from the master plan too.”
Those remarks, according to several political analysts, were an open declaration of war against Tinubu and a sure sign that the former allies may never get to work together again, at least not in the foreseeable future.
Some have also attributed the loss of Lagos by President Tinubu to the Labour Party’s candidate, Peter Obi in the 2023 presidential election to the fight between the godfather and godson. That fear is now being extended to 2027, given the coalition drive involving Aregbesola, Atiku and Obi among others.
While the political climate is presently clouded by a thick smoke of defections, one thing that remains very clear is that the last is yet to be written about the love-story-turned-sour of two former political allies.(Thisday)
