Edo APC Crisis Deepens as Stalwart Blasts ‘Obaseki-Style’ Primaries

2027 Election Watch, Edo State, Politics

Edo APC Boils Over as Stalwart Blasts ‘Obaseki-Style’ Primaries

Edo APC is once again staring at its own reflection, and the picture is not flattering. A party stalwart has accused the ruling structure of importing “Obaseki type of party primaries” into the APC, warning that the exercise has poisoned trust, deepened resentment and left the party’s grassroots badly bruised. The immediate trigger is Tinubu’s…

Atlantic Post

June 2, 2026

4–6 minutes

Adams Oshiomhole, Bola Tinubu, Edo APC, Monday Okpebholo, Political Crisis, Stanley Osifo

BENIN CITY — A fresh crack has opened inside the Edo State chapter of the All Progressives Congress, with a party stalwart launching a blistering attack on what he described as the importation of “Obaseki type of party primaries” into the ruling party.

His outburst, which has now become part of the wider post-primary debate in Edo, lands at a sensitive moment for the APC, just days after President Bola Tinubu was declared the overwhelming winner of the party’s direct presidential primary exercise in the state.

According to the official results reported by Punch and Channels Television, Tinubu scored 131,096 votes in Edo State, while his only challenger, Stanley Osifo, got one vote.

The exercise was conducted across the 192 wards of the state and formed part of the APC’s nationwide direct primary, which Channels said involved registered party members voting across 8,809 wards in the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.

On paper, the result looked like a landslide. Politically, however, the numbers have become the ammunition for a new internal argument about loyalty, structure and trust.

The Edo APC stalwart’s central complaint was not merely that the turnout was low in his reading of the exercise. His wider charge was that the party has allowed internal elections to become mechanical and elitist, with decisions allegedly written from above rather than earned through genuine competition.

In the remarks circulated from the state, he asked, “HOW MANY APC MEMBERS ARE IN EDO STATE NOW?”, then argued that the 131,000-plus votes for Tinubu showed that not all members came out.

He blamed “insincerity in the system”, accused party leaders of adopting an Obaseki-style approach to primaries, and warned that “there is visible and hidden anger in APC now”.

His most cutting line was that the party has been “seriously poisoned internally”. He went further, saying “Bad belle is surplus now”, a phrase that captures the depth of grievance among aggrieved members who believe they have been sidelined.

He insisted that when a primary is won “sincerely and genuinely”, the losers can be persuaded to work for the party in the general election. His remedy was blunt: reconciliation must begin immediately, injustice must be corrected, and leaders should stop acting as though they can do without “Mr A or Mr B”.

The force of the remark lies in Edo’s political history. The state has long been one of the APC’s most fractious battlegrounds, and the old Oshiomhole-Obaseki feud still casts a long shadow over the party’s internal culture.

In 2020, the APC national leadership insisted on a direct governorship primary in Edo, while the state chapter preferred the indirect model, setting off a bitter mode-of-primary dispute that was deepened by the supremacy battle between then Governor Godwin Obaseki and then APC National Chairman Adams Oshiomhole.

The crisis spiralled until Obaseki quit the APC after being disqualified from the party’s governorship race.

That history is important because the stalwart’s language suggests that old wounds were never properly healed.

His accusation that the party now behaves in an “Obaseki type of party primaries” manner is effectively a claim that the APC has inherited the very style of top-down manipulation it once condemned.

That is a serious charge in a state where the party has repeatedly struggled to balance hierarchy with participation, and where internal contestation has often turned into open revolt.

The inference from the available evidence is that the Edo APC may have won a symbolic primary victory for Tinubu, but it has not yet secured emotional buy-in from all its own foot soldiers.

The concern is not theoretical. In April 2026, former House of Representatives member Ehiozuwa Agbonayinma resigned from the APC in Edo State, citing undemocratic practices, marginalisation and the influence of a few powerful figures over the party’s affairs.

He said the party in his area was becoming “the property of one or a few individuals” and complained that those who worked against the APC were now dictating events within it.

That resignation, though separate from the current row, reinforces the same pattern: repeated allegations that Edo APC structures are being weakened by exclusion rather than strengthened by discipline.

What makes the present crisis even more delicate is that the Edo APC leadership has also been publicly projecting unity. In March 2026, the party’s state executive was re-elected unopposed, and the leadership openly endorsed Tinubu, Governor Monday Okpebholo and Senator Adams Oshiomhole.

Jarret Tenebe, the state chairman, spoke of unity, reconciliation and cohesion, while Oshiomhole praised the exercise as seamless. That public show of harmony now sits awkwardly beside the stalwart’s warnings about resentment, anger and internal poisoning.

There is also a strategic question hanging over the numbers. Governor Okpebholo has already said the Edo result is proof the state can deliver 2.5 million votes for Tinubu in 2027. But the stalwart’s reaction suggests that arithmetic alone will not win the next battle.

If the party’s own members feel marginalised, then a high primary figure becomes less a guarantee of future strength and more a warning light. In that sense, the 131,096 votes are not just a statistic; they are a measure of mobilisation, loyalty and unresolved suspicion inside the ruling party’s Edo machinery.

The stalwart ended on a defiant note, saying, “The truth will not kill me shia”, before adding a prayerful plea for blessing. It was a personal flourish, but it also underlined the real message of his intervention.

Edo APC, he argued in effect, must stop pretending that loyalty can be commanded without fairness. If the party wants peace, it must first repair the bruises left by primaries that too many insiders now believe were conducted in bad faith.