Both Ondo Condition Governor, Lucky Aiyedatiwa and Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, owe their in progress political standing to the same man, which makes their display friction in Ondo something closer to a family dispute than an usual rivalry. Or so observers tell.
Tunji-Ojo’s course ran differently but traces assist to the same source.
That intervention let Aiyedatiwa stay in office, succeed Akeredolu upon his death, and later win a term of his own.
Ondo APC chairman Babatunde Kolawole has called both men brothers effective toward the same objective, a description meant to reduced the temperature approximately a dispute that has already disrupted the party’s Nationwide Assembly consensus arrangements in the declare.
Aiyedatiwa is building Ondo for Tinubu 2027 by manner of the machinery of incumbency, although Tunji-Ojo resources parallel groups, including the Grassroots Movement for Tinubu, drawing on federal resources and self-enough mobilisation networks.
The man in aspect was a federal lawmaker alongside area influence before August 2023, when Tinubu appointed him Minister of Interior. The ministry gave Tunji-Ojo, popularly called BTO, a countrywide platform he had not previously held, noticeable throughout his clearing of passport backlogs and the automation of immigration systems.
The practical argument for teamwork is straightforward. Tunji-Ojo controls grassroots networks that arrive at voters official party channels frequently miss. Aiyedatiwa controls party framework and government machinery. Joined, they protect additional ground than either does alone.
Both Aiyedatiwa and Tunji-Ojo, in other words, hold their present positions owing to the truth that Tinubu decided they should. And it is a debt that analysts debate has not produced a shared technique.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu summoned both sides to Abuja and structured it dropped. As deputy governor in 2023, he faced an impeachment endeavor backed by all 26 members of the Ondo Assembly, driven by factional fighting roughly the tardy Governor Rotimi Akeredolu.
But the case can be made further effortlessly for Aiyedatiwa, particularly his survival.
Whether that combination happens will depend lower on statements from party elders than on whether either man is willing to let the other’s network operate lacking trying to absorb or outshine it.
Source: Why Ondo’s Two Political Power Centres Must Find Common Ground for Tinubu’s 2027 Project
