By Arc. Ayuba Musbau Kawu
The whispers within the All Progressives Congress in Kwara State have grown into a steady, uncomfortable murmur. Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq has, once again, resolved the question of political succession the only way he knows how — by choosing himself. Hon. Muktar Tolani Shagaya, the incumbent House of Representatives member for Ilorin West/Asa, and a man from the same Local Government Area, the same constituency, as the Governor, has been edged out of contention for the Kwara Central Senatorial seat’s bid of emperor Alade himself. Having governed the state for eight years, Abdulrazaq was presented with a choice to either allow Shagaya to bid for his second term in the federal legislature or pick the Senate ticket for himself. He chose the latter without hesitation. Up to this moment, this is the current situation on the subject matter.
This is not surprising to those who have followed Abdulrazaq’s political career with honest eyes. In 2018, after losing the APC governorship primary, he ran to Lagos and returned with the results rewritten in his favour. The will of the party’s delegates was set aside as if it were a minor administrative inconvenience. Then in 2022, he sacrificed Sen (Dr) Ibrahim Yahaya Oloriegbe — a distinguished medical doctor and one of the more intellectually substantive legislators Kwara Central has produced in recent memory — not on the altar of merit or public interest, but on the altar of political calculation. Mal. Saliu Mustapha’s growing grassroots appeal was seen, as at then, as a useful instrument for delivering the Governor’s second term bid, and so Oloriegbe was discarded. That is how decisions are made in this administration, not by what serves the people, but by what serves the man at the top.
What makes the current situation particularly galling is the context in which Abdulrazaq came to power. The Otoge movement of 2019 was built on a singular moral indictment that “Kwara had been held hostage by the vanity and self-interest of one man”.
Of the truth, this man they blackmailed valued and still values competence above other things. Thousands marched, rallied, and voted on the promise that a new political culture was arriving. What Kwara got instead was a seamless transfer of the worse scenario, not liberation from “one-man politics”, but its worse rebranding. The man who shouted loudest about the sins of personal rule has governed by worse principle.
Now, as 2027 approaches, the same playbook is being deployed with remarkable shamelessness. Not only is Abdulrazaq positioning himself for the Senate, but credible reports indicate he is actively working to install a hand-picked successor in Government House — a stooge, by any honest measure — whose primary qualification appears to be loyalty to the outgoing Governor.
The calculation is transparent as a pliable successor means a comfortable post-tenure existence, insulation from accountability, and the quiet burial of whatever financial and governance questions his administration must answer before history.
What Abdulrazaq consistently underestimates is the political memory of Kwarans. The state has a tradition of eventually rejecting those who overreach and will do so to Abdulrazaq come 2027.
Kwara deserves a 2027 conversation driven by ideas, equity, and genuine democratic contest — not one stage-managed from the corridors of a lame-duck administration. Whether the APC in Kwara has the institutional courage to resist this consolidation of personal power remains to be seen. What is already clear, however, is that Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq has written his own political epitaph — not as the reformer he claimed to be, but as the very thing he swore to end.
Arc. Ayuba Musbau Kawu writes from Ilorin, Kwara State