Daughter of former President Olusegun Obasanjo and a former governorship aspirant for the 2027 on the platform of All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ogun State, Iyabo Obasanjo, has resigned her membership of the ruling party over alleged maltreatment from its leadership.
Her resignation was contained in a letter forwarded to the state chairman of APC, Chief Yemi Sanusi, wherein she detailed plethora instances of occasions when she was disrespected notwithstanding her efforts at mobilising grassroots support for the party.
In the letter, dated 31st May, 2026, copies of which were made available to journalists yesterday, Iyabo, a professor of Epidemiology, faulted the party’s consensus primary election that threw up the senator currently representing Ogun West, Olamilekan Adeola Solomon, as the party’s governorship candidate for the forthcoming election.
Reiterating her earlier assurance for the party leadership that she would abide by the party’s consensus arrangement, Iyabo Obasanjo, who had represented Ogun Central at the Senate between years 2007 to 2011 alleged that the consensus arrangement fell short of the party’s spelt out rules and guidelines.
She emphatically stated that the party leadership did not consult her before announcing Sen. Adeola, popularly referred to as “Yayi” as the party’s consensus governorship candidate, saying such was against the laid down rules of the party.
Senator Iyabo also alleged that her supporters were violently manhandled and were not even allowed entry into the venue of the consensus governorship election where Sen. Adeola was announced as the party’s flag bearer for year 2027 guber election.
Iyabo disclosed that despite the trick employed to announce Adeola as the party’s flag bearer, she had stomached the irregularities and in the spirit of respecting party decision, issued a statement to congratulate Adeola and pledged to support his gubernatorial ambition.
“At the venue, with no prior meeting with me as a candidate, given what the national party says in its guidelines on what consensus should be, that is having meetings where all candidates agree to the candidate that will be announced, a candidate was announced.
“No one acknowledged my presence at the meeting given that I was the most prominent opposition to the candidate chosen and I had traversed the state mobilizing and encouraging grassroot APC support”.
“Based on my conviction that party unity is important, I wrote my letter accepting the party’s consensus candidate that night even with the flawed process”.
Citing further instances of maltreatment and disrespect, Iyabo lamented that the consensus candidate, Adeola has for over a 2-months period after his emergence, has failed to honour his promise of attending to the three requests presented by her supporters during a reconciliation meeting she had with Adeola after promising to get back within one week.
“At that meeting my people made three requests which I said were not compulsory but he should let me know so I would let my people know his responses and he said I should give him a week. Unless he gets back to me after I send this letter, he has not reached out to me after two months.
“This is just part of the general treatment I have received from APC of disrespect and rejection as if I was not there making contributions that increased support for the party in Ogun Central and across the state.
Consequent upon the maltreatment and cold rejection she had suffered since joining the party, Iyabo said she is left with no other choice than to quit the party.
