Is Adelabu Building Oyo’s Rainbow Coalition? | Taiwo Adisa

(Published by the Sunday Tribune, September 27, 2026)

Rainbow is the reigning colour in the build-up to 2027. At the national level, the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Nyesom Wike, leads a rainbow coalition that is rocking the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC). Wike and members of the Progressives Governors Forum (PGF) have been locked in a bitter dispute over the propriety of his decision to operationalise the Rainbow Coalition ahead of the 2027 election.

While that battle rages at the Abuja front and shows no sign of abating, another version of it may be brewing in Oyo State, South-West Nigeria. Though there is a significant difference in the operation and operationalisation of what some are calling the Ibadan Rainbow Coalition, those in the know insist that something akin to the Wike model may be emerging in the skies over Oyo. But there are frontal denials in Ibadan, unlike what is happening in Abuja, where the operators are not hiding at all. The Oyo State scenario is being linked to the immediate past Minister of Power, Chief Adebayo Adelabu, whose aide, Ajiboye Sangogade, last week led several other APC loyalists into the Allied People’s Movement (APM).

On Monday last week, a crowd of young people gathered around the precincts of the Adamasingba Stadium to witness a mixture of political rally and musical concert. They were received by leaders of the APM, including Governor Seyi Makinde and the Oyo State governorship candidate of the party. The APM is the party that inherited the assets and liabilities of the Governor Seyi Makinde-led Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Oyo State, and it is on this platform that the former PDP loyalists plan to contest the 2027 election. The internecine battle that tore the PDP apart prompted their relocation, and the APM has since become the warehouse for members of the governor’s camp. At the event, followers of Governor Seyi Makinde staged the Boye Nation/JAF concert to welcome the new entrants into the APM. Leading the new converts was a former aide of the immediate past Minister of Power, Chief Bayo Adelabu: Mr Ajiboye Sangogade, also known as Boye Nation. He is regarded as a prominent youth leader and a former personal assistant to the former Power Minister. Although Adelabu was not present, his picture loomed large as one Fuji music star after another took the microphone to welcome the latest APM members. Ajiboye’s open denial did nothing to change the minds of APC loyalists who had been watching Adelabu’s every move.

In his speech at the musical concert-cum-political rally, Ajiboye said: “I was a former personal assistant to Chief Adebayo Adelabu; I was not a member of the APC. I am mature enough to make my own decisions. What we are doing today has nothing to do with Adelabu; it was a decision I took independently.”

Those who maintain that Adelabu’s aides cannot join a political arrangement he has not endorsed insist that no scientific research is required to establish the implausibility of that claim.

It is possible that Adelabu’s decision to defect to the Accord Party in 2023, after losing the APC governorship ticket to Senator Teslim Folarin, has already coloured the thinking of those who make such conclusions. But the suspicion would not stop growing, so it seems. Many had long concluded that the former minister would again jump ship if he lost the APC’s ticket this year, and it would be difficult to convince such persons that Adelabu had no hand in the defection of his loyalists. In politics, we are told that one may commit an offence and can be forgiven if he seeks forgiveness—but the punishment must still be served. That appears to be the view guiding the Oyo APC loyalists’ thinking on Adelabu right now. The former minister may have been forgiven for working against the party in 2023 by defecting to Accord to contest its governorship ticket; yet that antecedent has become the reference point being used against him.

While many have boasted that nothing would stop Adelabu from defecting to a rival party once he loses the APC governorship ticket, the former minister has continued to profess his loyalty to President Bola Tinubu. Herein lies the test of that loyalty. The 2027 election comprises two cycles: the national elections (presidential and National Assembly) and the state elections (governorship and House of Assembly). For an aspirant to declare support for the president while remaining silent on the governorship contest is widely seen as a way of distancing himself from the governorship candidate.

That silence appears to be Adelabu’s albatross. Even though he has denied knowledge of his former personal assistant’s decision to team up with Governor Seyi Makinde and others in the APM, few are willing to believe that he has not positioned himself with one foot in each camp—a classic “one leg in, one leg out” posture.

A day after the Boye Nation/JAF musical concert, Minister Adelabu publicly distanced himself from his former aide, stating that the youth leader had ceased to be his assistant. He said Ajiboye was no longer his personal assistant and had no official, political, or representational relationship with him. The relationship, he claimed, ended following “irreconcilable differences in their political alignments,” which led Ajiboye to join the APM while he himself remained in the APC.

Adelabu declared: “I remain a member of the APC and have no intention of leaving the party. My disagreement with aspects of the Oyo governorship nomination is about the process and the need for transparency and legitimacy, and not an excuse to abandon the party.

“I will not betray President Bola Tinubu, whom I regard as my political mentor and benefactor, or abandon the party that provided me the opportunity to serve. So, I am using this period to distance myself from yesterday’s defection of my former aide, Akande, from the APC to the APM during a rally held in Ibadan.”

The statement further laid bare his bitterness over the governorship primaries. Like a blacksmith who keeps striking the same spot on the iron, he questioned the integrity of the primary election that produced Senator Sharafadeen Abiodun Alli as the governorship candidate in the state. While insisting that his ambition to govern Oyo State was “not a do-or-die matter,” he continued to demand evidence that the primary had actually been conducted in the state.

He stated: “Let the results of the exercise be properly released, supported by the relevant signed documents and other verifiable evidence. That, in my view, is the proper foundation for acceptance and collective support.

“My governorship ambition has never been a do-or-die affair. My interest has always been about the opportunity to serve Oyo. Besides, I am neither idle nor dependent on political office for my livelihood.

“Since leaving public office, I have remained fully engaged in my real estate, hospitality, farming, and financial securities businesses. I therefore do not need to jump from one political party to another simply to remain relevant.”

Because Adelabu’s blacksmith shows no sign of tiring of striking the same spot, his professions of loyalty to the President appear to be falling on deaf ears. Many argue that his failure to restrain his loyalists from defecting to a rival party already constitutes a vote of no confidence in the APC. Others suggest that the movement of persons associated with him could mark the launch of an Oyo version of a Rainbow Coalition, in which loyalists of other aggrieved APC chiefs could quietly find their way into the APM.

In an interview, Ajiboye told the Oyo APC that it was fitting that the party’s campaign office was located near the workshop of some coffin-makers, which he said was evidence of the collapse his group intended to visit upon the party. Was he speaking from a position of assurance given by some of the aggrieved governorship aspirants? That is the assignment the Oyo APC may wish to undertake.

Years ago, in a duet, King Sunny Ade and Onyeka Onwenu sang: “If you love me, you go wait for me.” One cannot claim to love the president while rejecting the conduct of his party. Some party leaders would be quick to remind Adelabu of the magnanimity the APC had shown him in the past. In 2019, he was not the frontrunner when the governorship ticket was taken from Joseph Olasunkanmi Tegbe and handed to him; incidentally, Tegbe is the current Minister of Power. In 2023, Adelabu worked against the APC by defecting to the Accord to contest the governorship election, after he had lost the primary election to Senator Teslim Folarin. Weeks after his heavy defeat at that poll, he returned to the APC and was given a ministerial position by President Bola Tinubu—to the chagrin of many party members who felt they had worked faithfully for the party.

By insisting that the APC must revisit its primaries (and possibly reverse Sharafadeen Alli’s victory) after INEC has already published the governorship candidate and his running mate, Adelabu appears to be asking for something more than the head of John the Baptist. It could even be likened to a demand that a newborn baby return to the mother’s womb to be born again. Not a few party leaders are wondering whether the impossible condition the former minister had laid down is not simply an excuse to launch the Oyo version of the Rainbow Coalition.