By Michael Oluwagbemi

Politics is ultimately about addition.

Parties win elections not merely by preserving the purity of their existing membership, but by building coalitions large enough to command a majority. This elementary principle of democratic politics has been illustrated rather dramatically by two states—Plateau and Osun—and the contrasting choices made by the All Progressives Congress (APC) in each.

In Plateau, the APC ultimately chose accommodation over exclusion. In Osun, its state establishment chose resistance. The outcomes could hardly have been more different.

Governor Caleb Mutfwang, elected Governor of Plateau State on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in 2023, was hardly a natural candidate for an enthusiastic embrace by the Plateau APC establishment. He had defeated the APC candidate, Professor Nentawe Yilwatda, in a bruising election. His entry therefore threatened established ambitions, altered calculations for 2027 and raised the obvious question of who would control the party machinery.

 

Indeed, the resistance was real. In October 2025, Plateau APC leaders adopted a motion opposing Mutfwang’s possible entry into the party. The North-Central APC Forum publicly challenged that position, arguing that electoral strength and the ability to expand the party should take precedence over the personal interests of existing stakeholders.

Yet the national political calculation eventually prevailed.

Mutfwang joined the APC. By January 2026, the same Yilwatda—now APC National Chairman—was publicly welcoming the governor and describing his defection as contributing to unity, stability and progress in Plateau.

That transition is important.

It demonstrated the difference between politics as personal possession and politics as coalition building. Plateau APC members who had fought Mutfwang were understandably concerned about their political futures. But the larger party eventually concluded that capturing an incumbent governor—and with him much of the political architecture surrounding the governorship—was worth the internal discomfort.

The party expanded the tent.

Osun Chose Differently

Osun presented an almost parallel situation, but produced the opposite response.

Governor Ademola Adeleke had defeated an incumbent APC governor, Gboyega Oyetola, in 2022. Like Mutfwang in Plateau, Adeleke represented not merely an opposition governor but the man responsible for removing the APC from Government House.

Then came the political realignments ahead of 2026.

There are competing accounts of precisely how the discussions unfolded. Adeleke publicly denied in July 2025 that he was defecting, while the Osun APC publicly asserted that it had rejected his overtures.

What is no longer seriously disputed, however, is that the possibility of Adeleke joining the APC encountered powerful resistance from the existing Osun APC establishment. To be clear, Adeleke was once in APC with his late elder brother, Senator Isiaka Adeleke who he sought to replace. Hence, his desire to return wasn’t unusual.

But there was always bad blood since he beat the APC at his first political baptism of fire, when he crossed to the PDP and contested for his late brother’s seat from the outside against all odds and won, beating the two APC leaders (former Governor Aregbesola and Oyetola, who was then the Chief of Staff) at the ballot. The second time around, he narrowly lost by less than 500 votes after a contested election to them. Politics of revenge seems to have dominated the ping-pong hardball politics of Osun state that has soon fractured on the APC once Oyetola and Aregbesola parted ways.

The state APC chairman, Tajudeen Lawal, went so far as to describe Adeleke as a “liability” whose admission would damage the party. A party chieftain subsequently confirmed publicly that the state leadership had rebuffed efforts to bring Adeleke into the APC.

More significantly, Adeleke’s own camp later acknowledged that President Bola Tinubu had invited him to join the APC but alleged that former Governor Oyetola and the Osun APC blocked the move.

Whatever one thinks about the competing partisan narratives surrounding those negotiations, the political outcome is indisputable.

Adeleke did not join the APC.

He eventually left the PDP and moved to Accord. And on August 15, 2026, the voters of Osun delivered their verdict.

Adeleke won.

INEC declared him re-elected with 511,067 votes, defeating APC candidate Bola Oyebamiji, who received 444,815 votes—a margin of 66,252 votes. Adeleke carried 19 local government areas against the APC’s 11.

The man whom elements of the APC establishment had considered a political liability had demonstrated that he possessed precisely the asset that matters most in electoral politics: votes.

The Irony of Plateau

The contrast with Plateau becomes even more striking when one remembers who stood most directly to lose from Mutfwang’s admission.

Professor Nentawe Yilwatda had been the APC candidate defeated by Mutfwang in 2023. He therefore had perhaps the strongest personal political reason to resist the governor’s entry.

There was indeed considerable opposition within the Plateau APC. Some feared that admitting Mutfwang would effectively hand him the party structure and possibly its 2027 governorship ticket.

But politics eventually demanded accommodation.

By the time Mutfwang was formally received, Yilwatda himself was publicly presenting the governor’s arrival as evidence of the APC’s expanding strength. The former adversary had become an asset.

That is political maturity—not because politicians should abandon principles, but because political parties exist to aggregate interests rather than merely protect incumbents within their own structures.

Osun’s Strategic Error

The Osun APC appears to have made the opposite calculation.

Its leaders treated the party partly as an inheritance to be protected from an outsider rather than as a vehicle through which a broader electoral coalition could be assembled.

The concern was understandable.

If Adeleke entered the APC as a sitting governor, who would lead the party in Osun? What would become of the ambitions of established APC leaders? What would happen to those who had spent years opposing him? Would the governor arrive with his own followers and overwhelm those who had remained loyal during the party’s years outside Government House?

These are legitimate questions.

But they are questions about the distribution of power inside the party.

The electorate asks a different question: who should govern the state?

That distinction is fundamental.

A political party can win every internal argument and still lose the election.

That is essentially what happened in Osun.

The APC preserved its internal hierarchy, selected its preferred candidate and prevented the incumbent opposition governor from entering its fold.

Adeleke simply took his political constituency elsewhere—and defeated the APC.

Addition Before Subtraction

There is a wider lesson here for the APC as it approaches the 2027 general elections.

Successful political parties must constantly distinguish between ideological boundaries that should not be crossed and personal interests that should not be mistaken for ideology.

There is nothing unusual about longstanding members resisting newcomers. Every large political organisation experiences this tension. Those who built a party understandably expect loyalty to count for something.

But a party that cannot absorb successful outsiders eventually becomes a club rather than an electoral machine.

Politics requires addition.

The genius of successful political coalitions lies precisely in their capacity to persuade former opponents that there is room inside the tent—and then to persuade existing members that enlarging the tent ultimately serves everyone better than guarding an increasingly empty one.

This is particularly relevant to a governing party.

President Tinubu’s political career has historically been associated with coalition building: accommodating disparate interests, recruiting former adversaries and recognising that today’s opponent may become tomorrow’s indispensable ally.

Plateau followed that logic.

Osun resisted it.

There Is Also a Warning for National Parties

Yet there is another side to the argument.

National leadership cannot simply impose defectors upon state chapters without managing the legitimate anxieties of existing members. Otherwise, today’s expansion produces tomorrow’s rebellion.

The Plateau experience worked because the political system eventually found a way to move from hostility to accommodation. The people who had opposed Mutfwang’s entry did not disappear. Their interests had to be managed within a new political reality.

That is the real art.

A national party must be capable of telling loyal members:

You matter, but the party must grow.

And it must simultaneously tell incoming political heavyweights:

You are welcome, but you are joining an existing family.

Neither side can have everything.

That is coalition politics.

2027: The Lesson Beyond Two States

The importance of Plateau and Osun extends far beyond two governorship contests.

Nigeria is entering another period of extraordinary political realignment. Governors, legislators and political blocs are reconsidering old allegiances ahead of 2027. The APC has benefited enormously from this movement, expanding its control across much of the federation as opposition parties struggle with fragmentation.

But size alone does not guarantee political durability.

The harder challenge is managing the contradictions created by expansion.

Every governor who defects brings supporters—but also threatens somebody already inside.

Every senator admitted creates anxiety for an existing aspirant.

Every new bloc enlarges the coalition while simultaneously complicating the allocation of tickets, appointments and influence.

The successful political party is therefore not necessarily the one without internal conflict. It is the one capable of subordinating those conflicts to the larger objective of winning elections and governing effectively.

Plateau APC faced that test and, after considerable resistance, chose accommodation.

Osun APC faced a remarkably similar test and chose exclusion.

One now has the governor safely inside the governing party.

The other has just watched the governor it refused to admit defeat it at the polls.

That is perhaps the simplest lesson of Osun 2026:

Never confuse control of the party with control of the electorate.

Political parties are voluntary associations, but elections are decided by citizens outside their meeting rooms. Protecting existing interests may win applause at a stakeholders’ meeting; building the broadest credible coalition is what wins elections.

In Plateau, the APC eventually decided that it was better to accommodate an opponent who could bring political value than to preserve the comfort of those already inside.

In Osun, it decided otherwise.

The voters have now supplied the balance sheet.

And as 2027 approaches, every serious political party in Nigeria—not only the APC—would do well to study it.

Michael O. Oluwagbemi is Co-founder & Emeritus Partner at LoftyInc Allied Partners Limited (operator of the Wennovation Hub based in Lagos, Nigeria and LoftyInc Capital Management in the USA).