OP-ED: The Trials of Governor AA, by Ahmed Mohammed

OP-ED: The Trials of Governor AA, by Ahmed Mohammed

The 2027 Guber marathon in Kwara is no longer just about who succeeds Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq. It has become a referendum on political memory, coalition management, and the cost of forgetting how you came to power. To understand the anxiety gripping Kwara state today, we must return to 2019, the year O’ to ge rewrote Kwara state political establishment.

For many of us who hold no party membership cards, Governor AA emergence was not about APC or PDP. It was about exhale. After decades of what felt like monarchical politics, the state finally saw a coalition wide enough, angry enough, and strategic enough to dismantle the Saraki dynasty. O’ to ge, “enough is enough”  was not a slogan. It was a social contract.

The APC did not win Kwara by accident. It engineered a rare convergence of estranged political titans. Bashir Omolaja Bolarinwa brought the grassroots bite. Professor Oba abdulraheem brought diplomatic polish and administrative networks. Ambassador Yahaya Seriki brought ilorin establishment credibility. Alhaji Tajudeen Makama and S.Y. Abdullahi brought the Northern structure. Mashood Mustapha and Senator Salihu Mustapha brought elite and traditional ballast. Lukman Mustapha, Iyiola Oyedepo, and a dozen old powers who shelved personal ambition for a collective mission. These men did not just endorse AbdulRazaq. They became the Governor’s campaign. They funded it, framed it, and sold it in markets, mosques, and motor parks.

We believed them because the alternative was unthinkable. For years, the state budget had felt like a family allowance, disbursed from one parlor. Contracts, appointments, and even party tickets flowed from a single tap. O’ to ge promised to break the tap and rebuild the plumbing. The “new sheriffs in town” were not perfect, but they looked like joint custodians of a new order. History will record that moment as Kwara’s closest flirtation with genuine political pluralism.

Then came the divorce; quiet, bitter, and profoundly consequential.

Victory has a way of rewriting memories. Once sworn in, Governor AbdulRazaq began to govern as if O’ to ge was a one-man insurgency. The war room became a waiting room. The architects became spectators. Phone calls went unreturned. Stakeholder meetings became monologues. The coalition that had weaponized collective grievance was now asked to endure collective exclusion.

This was not mere oversight. It was temperament made policy. The Governor, by many accounts, struggles with impulse control and narrow framing of dissent. Disagreement was read as disloyalty. Counsel was mistaken for conspiracy. The very heart of his victory, became the epicenter of his political isolation. The same elite bloc that delivered Kwara Central now whispers about payback. The same southern allies who accepted a Central governor in 2019 now ask: “If power is not shared in victory, why should it be rotated in succession?”

Which brings us to the present danger, The marginalized Kwara North chances.

With APC primaries barely days away, Kwara has no succession signal from the incumbent. That silence is not strategy. It is a symptom. A Governor who cannot keep his original coalition cannot credibly anoint its next beneficiary. Nature abhors a vacuum, and politics punishes it. The PDP is watching. So are ambitious elements within APC who believe the Governor hesitation is an invitation.

Last week, four APC governors; Nasarawa’s Sule, Borno’s Zulum, Ogun’s Abiodun, and Lagos’ Sanwo-Olu staged a quiet masterclass in succession management. Their message: “The right time to announce our successor is NOW.” It was not aimed at Kwara, but it landed there. Because leadership is not just about building roads. It is about building runways for others to land. Confidence is the currency. For some, it comes with age. For others, it is earned in the scar tissue of experience.

Governor AA’s trial, then, is not an opposition plot. It is the bill coming due for internal displacement. O’ to ge was a revolution against one-man rule. But you cannot replace a dynasty with a solo act and expect the music to change. You cannot preach equity to the state while practicing exclusion in your camp. You cannot demand loyalty in 2027 from men you alienated in 2020.

Almost every reformer starts as a radical. Convinced. Unyielding. Certain that his lens is the only clear one. The great ones evolve. They learn that compromise is not cowardice. That hearing other rooms does not weaken your voice. That a Governor desk is big enough for more than one ego.

Governor Abdulrasaq still has a narrow window to recalibrate. The O’ to ge bloc is bruised, not dead. Many of its leaders would rather save the project than sink it. But reconciliation requires what has been scarce in this administration: emotional intelligence, deliberate humility, and the courage to say “I was wrong.”

Because 2027 will not just elect a Governor. It will issue a verdict on whether O’ to ge was a moment or a movement. Whether “enough is enough” applied only to Saraki, or to every brand of political exclusion.

There is an old English aphorism that goes: “The man who burns the bridge after crossing should pray the river dries.” Kwara’s river is not drying. It is rising. And the same tide that carried Governor AbdulRazaq in 2019 is gathering again; only this time, he is not holding the paddle.

If he does not rebuild that bridge, he may find out too late that in Kwara, no one reigns alone. Not even a sheriff.