The All Progressives Congress has, in one public stroke, humiliated my brother, Honourable Wole Oke, by allowing him to dance naked in the open, after all his efforts to get former Governor Oyetola to impose him as the APC candidate for Oriade Obokun. This is the danger of a politics built on entitlement. The moment your confidence depends on imposition, you will eventually meet the day when the crowd refuses to clap.
Wole Oke has been in the House of Representatives for over twenty years on the goodwill of the people of ORIADE and OBOKUN local governments. I can say boldly that Wole Oke is who he is today because the people of Oriade Obokun selflessly invested in his political career by giving him a mandate every four years to return to the National Assembly, where he built his influence and prosperity.
Wole Oke deserted the PDP too early, after the party had made things good for him, simply because the party made a democratic demand that should not offend any serious person. After enjoying the ticket repeatedly and sitting in office for over two decades, the party insisted it was time to allow other aspirants a fair contest through primaries. Nobody said he would be denied. They only said he should not be handed the ticket as a birthright. That offended him. And when it became clear he could not go unopposed again, he decamped. In a democracy, that kind of exit always has a meaning. It tells the public that the problem was not persecution, it was competition.
Now, Obokun has answered him in the language he understands best, structure. The Obokun APC Leaders Forum has openly and unanimously endorsed Barrister Seun Odofin as their preferred candidate for the House of Representatives, Oriade Obokun Federal Constituency, 2027. Not quietly. Not through whispers. They did it at their regular meeting in Imesi Ile. A motion was moved, it was seconded, it was affirmed, and names were put behind it. They did not pretend. They did not manage his ego. They made a political statement.
This is what an Englishman would call humiliation. They did more than endorse. They explained why. They praised Odofin’s loyalty, his moral and financial contributions over the past one and a half years, and his engagement with party leadership ahead of the 2026 governorship election. In politics, when leaders publicly cite loyalty, consistency, and sacrifice, what they are really saying is that someone else has failed those tests. They are drawing a line between a man who stayed and built and a man who arrived with entitlement and demanded the crown.
This is where Wole Oke’s problem becomes deeper than an endorsement. It becomes a lesson. The beauty of democracy is opposition. The strength of democracy is competition. Any politician who cannot survive a primary has no moral standing to preach democracy to anyone. If you want leadership, you submit yourself to the people. You do not hide behind godfathers. You do not turn party structure into a private inheritance. You do not treat voters like spectators.
And so the question now becomes unavoidable. What will Wole Oke do with this humiliation in Obokun. Will he fight the Obokun leaders who have taken a position. Will he fight the APC structure that has clearly signalled it does not intend to hand him the ticket on a platter. Will he fight the very party he ran to for protection. Where will he go next. Politics does not reward a man who keeps running from competition. At some point, the public begins to see the pattern, and the pattern becomes the verdict.
If Wole Oke truly believes he still has value, the democratic path is simple. Let him declare. Let him build. Let him campaign. Let him face the primaries. Let him defeat the candidate the leaders have endorsed. That is how relevance is proved in politics. Not by tantrums, not by blackmail, and not by forcing a ticket through the back door.
Because this is the truth that Obokun has now put in public. Oriade Obokun is not anybody’s personal constituency. It is not a private estate. It is not a seat that renews itself by habit. It is a democratic space. And in a democratic space, the era of entitlement always ends the same way. It ends when the people and their leaders finally say no.
Prince Diran Odeyemi is a former Deputy National Publicity Secretary of the PDP and Chairman, OSCOTECH Governing Council.
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