Two weeks after President Bola Tinubu’s South-West marketing campaign coordinator, Prof. Sola Adeyeye, stated the first individual he known as on his appointment was Rauf Aregbesola, the former Osun governor has branded the President’s well-known slogan “despotism”. SIKIRU OBARAYESE traces how a decades-old alliance turned certainly one of the sharpest private rivalries heading into the 2027 polls.
“Despotism is a single word for ‘Emi lokan’.”
With these phrases, in a video posted on his X deal with, @raufaregbesola, on Tuesday, October 6, 2026, former Osun State governor and ex-Minister of Interior, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, took his quarrel with President Bola Tinubu to its most private degree but. He went after the very phrase that carried his former political boss to the presidency.
“Despot. A man who believes that he has a divine right to administer space and time. That’s ‘Emi lokan’, not ‘awa lokan’, not ‘egbe lokan’, not ‘eeyan lokan’,” Aregbesola stated in the video.
He went additional: “Emi… that is affirming a divine authority. A divine right to rule. If that was not well understood then, I want to believe that Nigerians now know what it really means. So, we are now having it not just being merely said rhetorically but being physically demonstrated.”
He closed with a name to the citizens: “But Nigerians have the opportunity today to prevent the assault on democracy.” His accompanying publish on X learn: “Nigerians have the opportunity in 2027 to halt the current assault on democracy.”
Aregbesola is now the National Secretary of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), the opposition platform on which former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar is contesting the presidential election scheduled for January 16, 2027.
The phrase he dissected has a historical past. According to The Scoop, Tinubu stated “Emi lokan”, Yoruba for “it is my turn”, in a speech to All Progressives Congress (APC) delegates in Abeokuta, Ogun State, on June 2, 2022, forward of the social gathering’s presidential major. It turned the rallying cry of his marketing campaign.
A name that got here two weeks earlier
The video got here barely ten days after certainly one of Tinubu’s personal marketing campaign chiefs spoke publicly of attempting to woo Aregbesola again.
Former Senator representing Osun Central, Professor Olusola Adeyeye, who’s the South-West Coordinator of the APC presidential marketing campaign council, stated on Channels Television’s Sunday Politics programme on Sunday, September 27, that the appointment got here to him as a shock.
“I called members of the party to find out if a mistake had been made. I was told that no mistake was made, that it was intentional. After I found out that indeed I was to be the coordinator of that campaign, the first person I called was Rauf,” Adeyeye stated on the programme.
He defined the motive on the similar programme: “For me, I thought I could give it a last effort to bring Rauf back to the fold of APC. I said this because Rauf is a tremendously talented person. Nobody takes that away from him.”
Asked whether or not anybody might reconcile the two males, Adeyeye was much less hopeful. “I don’t know; only God knows. When things get to be like this, only the two of them can forgive each other,” he stated. He described a reconciliation as fascinating for the social gathering and the President’s re-election, however stated Aregbesola’s place in the ADC would make it troublesome for him to go away with out answering to his supporters. Discoverer Nigeria reported that Adeyeye stated he would welcome Aregbesola again “with talking drums” if he selected to return.
But Adeyeye additionally made clear, in keeping with Channels Television, that he didn’t regard the former governor as an electoral risk on his personal. Pointing to the August 15, 2026 Osun governorship election, he requested: “How did the ADC perform, even in Ilesa? How did Aregbesola perform in Osun Central, where I come from?”
“If Aregbesola is the candidate, it’s a different matter,” he stated. “The truth is he’s still a magnificent person, much loved. If he were a candidate, believe you me, anybody would be hard-pressed to beat him in Osun, but where he’s not the candidate, even he must not deceive himself that he can automatically take the affection for him to another person,” he stated.
Aregbesola has not stated whether or not his October 6 video was a response to Adeyeye. What was stated on the phone name, if it held in any respect, has additionally not been made public.
From half wage to “legacy of hardship”
The October video is the newest in a yr of open exchanges. In April 2026, at the ADC nationwide conference in Abuja, Aregbesola known as on President Tinubu to resign and described the Renewed Hope Agenda as a “renewed scam”. The Presidency replied swiftly. The Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, Mr Bayo Onanuga, in a publish on X, described the gathering as an “illegal elective convention” of “a party of desperados and power mongers”.
“At the event, Aregbesola reportedly called on his former boss, mentor, and benefactor to resign,” Onanuga wrote. “His eight years as governor of Osun State were characterised by unmitigated hardship for the people. Under his half-baked socialist policies, civil servants went unpaid for months, and those who were paid received only a fraction of their salaries,” he wrote.
He added: “No, Rauf, the Renewed Hope Agenda is not a scam. The real scammers are the politicians gathered inside the SPV called ADC.” Leadership additionally reported Onanuga as criticising Aregbesola’s tenure as Interior Minister, citing jailbreaks together with the Kuje jail escape.
Four months later, the President spoke for himself. On August 21, 2026, the Nigerian Tribune reported that whereas receiving Osun State Governor Ademola Adeleke at the Presidential Villa, days after Adeleke received the August 15 governorship election, Tinubu revived the nickname that trailed Aregbesola’s second time period.
“In your state, I know a man that I raised who is nicknamed half salary,” the President stated, whereas criticising Atiku’s proposal to revive gas subsidy. In latest reporting, it’s the first time Tinubu himself has publicly hit again at his former ally, moderately than via aides.
The phrases “a man that I raised” go to the coronary heart of the matter. Aregbesola’s rise is tied to Tinubu. He was Director of the Bola Ahmed Tinubu Campaign Organisation that drove Tinubu’s 1999 victory in Lagos and his return in 2003, and he served as Lagos Commissioner for Works and Infrastructure beneath Tinubu.
How it fell aside
The cracks return to the 2018 Osun succession. Aregbesola himself traced it there. Addressing loyalists in Ijebu-Jesa in 2022, he stated, as reported, “When he (Tinubu) will hand over the present governor to me around July of 2018, he (Tinubu) declared that he (Oyetola) will succeed me and continue my good works. That was what he told me. He knows he has not done so if he is listening now and he has failed to call my successor to order,” Aregbesola stated.
Gboyega Oyetola had been Aregbesola’s chief of workers. Many reported at the time that Oyetola was not Aregbesola’s alternative in 2018. Once in workplace, the two fell out over management of the social gathering, and Aregbesola’s loyalists fashioned The Osun Progressives (TOP). Parallel congresses in October 2021 produced two state executives: Rasaq Salinsile led the TOP faction, whereas Prince Gboyega Famodun led the one loyal to Oyetola, in keeping with Daily Trust and The Guardian.
In 2021, the intervention by Tinubu and former Governor Bisi Akande to reconcile each males failed. In the February 19, 2022 APC governorship major, Oyetola beat Aregbesola’s candidate, Moshood Adeoti, by 222,169 votes to 12,921, in keeping with Punch. Aregbesola’s camp rejected the outcome; his media aide, Sola Fasure, stated it was “farcically counted in favour of the governor”. Oyetola went on to lose the July 2022 election to Adeleke.
Adeyeye has now reopened that wound from inside the APC.
Missing from the council
Aregbesola’s assault comes at a clumsy time inside his personal social gathering. It was reported that he was lacking from the ADC presidential marketing campaign council record launched in September by Atiku. However, the social gathering’s National Publicity Secretary, Bolaji Abdullahi, stated the omission shouldn’t be learn as estrangement.
That leaves questions on the actual function the ADC’s nationwide scribe will play in the 2027 race. Adeyeye’s comment about whether or not Aregbesola’s goodwill can switch to a different candidate is pointed at precisely that.
WATCH TOP VIDEOS FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE TV
