The All Progressives Congress (APC) is firming up arrangements to settle on Deputy Governor of Lagos State, Obafemi Hamzat, as its governorship candidate for the 2027 election in Lagos State.
Similarly, the party stakeholders are said to also favour the senator representing Ogun West and Chairman, Senate Appropriations Committee, Olamilekan Adeola, popularly known as Yayi, for Ogun State, and the senator representing Oyo South Senatorial District, Sharafadeen Alli, for Oyo State.
The purported decisions emerged from a meeting of APC stakeholders from the three states with President Bola Tinubu in Lagos on Sunday night.
Tinubu hosted Vice President Kashim Shettima and 23 governors at his Lagos home for the Eid el-Fitr celebrations and close sources say that the President and party stakeholders from Lagos, Ogun and Oyo held another meeting to take critical decisions ahead of next year’s general elections.
The Independent National Electoral Commission has scheduled the Presidential and National Assembly elections for January 16, 2027, and the governorship and State Houses of Assembly elections for February 6, 2027.
In its released timetable, INEC stated that political parties were expected to conduct their primaries between April and May 2026, with candidates emerging by the end of May.
The Electoral Act 2026 (amended) provides that candidates of political parties may be selected either through a consensus arrangement or direct primaries.
For the APC, the party traditionally favours a consensus approach, highlighting the popularity of such candidates and their track record of winning elections.
President Tinubu returned to Lagos on Friday following a two-day state visit to the United Kingdom. He spent part of his Sallah break in the commercial city, attending to key political matters, including discussions on potential successors in the South-West states ahead of the 2027 elections.
In the South-West, only Lagos, Ogun, and Oyo states will hold governorship elections in 2027, and the President is prepared to lead the party to victory from his zone.
Multiple sources at the Lagos meeting of South-West APC stakeholders with Tinubu confirmed that the session was lengthy, involving detailed deliberations on party strategy and candidate selection.
One of the sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said, “The choices of Hamzat, Yayi, and Alli were arrived at after a prolonged discussion with the President, taking into account the collective opinions of those present and the popularity of the candidates in their respective states.”
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