Oyo Political Showdown: Arapaja’s Governorship Bid Dead on Arrival, Says Ogunsina

The political landscape in Oyo State is reaching a boiling point, and the discourse has turned personal and pointed. Michael Ogunsina, a former member of the Oyo State Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) Executive Committee, has delivered a scathing assessment of Ambassador Taofeek Arapaja’s gubernatorial ambitions, labeling the project an “exercise in futility” that is destined to collapse under the weight of current internal fractures.

Drawing on his intimate knowledge of the party’s inner workings and the mechanisms of power in Ibadan, Ogunsina, who once sat at the high table of the PDP, contends that Arapaja has been left isolated by the strategic realignment of Governor Seyi Makinde’s camp. According to Ogunsina, the governor’s transition to the APM is not merely a tactical maneuver but a total repudiation of the current PDP factional leadership. He asserts that the party faithful, recognizing the legal jeopardy surrounding any candidate still tethered to the embattled PDP platform, are already abandoning the ship in droves to fall in line with the Makinde-backed APM agenda.

For Ogunsina, the math is simple: a political structure is only as strong as its machinery, and with the governor’s faction having effectively “locked the doors” on the PDP, Arapaja is being left to run on a platform that the electorate has been explicitly warned to avoid. By framing the move to the APM as the only viable path for the state’s political future, the former EXCO member suggests that Arapaja’s path to the governorship has become a dead end, leaving him to preside over a faction that—while still claiming the PDP name—has lost its relevance in the face of a broader, more strategic political migration.