“To bandits, kidnappers, and sponsors of terror, Surrender now or face the full force of the Nigerian state. This window of surrender will not remain open forever, no mercy will be shown to those who trade in the blood of Nigerians”
~ President Bola Tinubu says
@FolushoxFolarin The man is well grounded in his domain, his antecedent is also unique and it has helped him is consolidating his base when he became governor.
*OGD MEDIA OFFICE PRESS STATEMENT*
29 April 2026
The OGD Media Office has been inundated with requests to respond to claims reportedly made by the outgoing Governor, Dapo Abiodun, at a private meeting in Iperu.
It is instructive that Governor Dapo Abiodun chose a closed gathering in his home to float claims he has, by his own admission, never dared to make publicly. Statements built on fiction are best circulated in rooms where they cannot be immediately interrogated.
For the record, however, two major claims were made: first, that Mr. Abiodun, as he then was in 2003, assisted and collapsed his structure in support of Otunba Gbenga Daniel’s emergence as Governor of Ogun State; and second, that Governor Dapo Abiodun was instrumental to the emergence of Otunba Gbenga Daniel as Senator representing Ogun East Senatorial District in 2023, twenty years later.
*First, the 2003 story.*
It is true that Mr. Dapo Abiodun contested in the PDP governorship primaries between 2001 and 2003, in which Otunba Daniel emerged as the party’s candidate. It is also on record that among the eight aspirants at the time, Mr. Abiodun’s campaign was the most “vicious” against Otunba Gbenga Daniel.
After the contest held on December 23, 2002, widely adjudged free and fair, OGD was returned as the party’s candidate with a decisive margin of about 90% of the total delegates. He immediately engaged all his co-aspirants, including Prince Emma Shoda, Omoba Doyin Okupe, Prince Yemi Adefulu, and later Dapo Abiodun, in that order, with a “No Victor, No Vanquished” mindset.
It must also be reiterated that Mr. Dapo Abiodun was the last to join this handshake of collaboration, reportedly because he was preoccupied with forceful recovery efforts from supporters and delegates he suspected did not vote for him. Those who failed to return items and funds in their custody were, by several accounts, duly “punished” in what has come to be seen as his trademark style.
It is equally on record that Otunba Daniel ran an inclusive government and appointed Mr. Dapo Abiodun as the pioneer Chairman of the newly formed Gateway Oil & Gas Committee, which midwifed the establishment of the state’s oil and gas limited liability company. Prince Wemmy Osude served as Managing Director.
It should also not be forgotten that Mr. Dapo Abiodun lost woefully to Senator Buruji Kashamu of the PDP in the 2015 Ogun East Senatorial District election. So much for the strength of that “structure.”
In 2019, however, the support of Otunba Gbenga Daniel was widely acknowledged. The governorship election was, by all indications, Mr. Abiodun’s to lose due to bitter internal wrangling within the All Progressives Congress at the time. The party structure was firmly in the control of then- Governor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, whose preferred candidate was widely seen as being on course for victory.
At that critical moment, Otunba Gbenga Daniel, then a PDP chieftain, was approached to support Mr. Abiodun. He heeded the call, placing the future and development of Ogun State above partisan considerations, especially as the PDP itself was entangled in a debilitating legal crisis over its governorship candidacy. OGD not only mobilised his political structure in support of Mr. Abiodun, he also publicly raised his hand in a symbolic show of acceptance before thousands of supporters and members of the media.
*On the 2023 Senatorial Election*
The events leading to the 2023 senatorial contest are well documented. It must be clearly stated that Senator Otunba Gbenga Daniel won the Ogun East Senatorial election on the strength of his name, his legacy, and the overwhelming support and goodwill of his people. He remains one of the most consequential political figures Ogun State has ever produced.
The suggestion that his emergence as senator was a product of Governor Abiodun’s backstage choreography is not only false, it is an insult to every voter in Ogun East Senatorial District who participated in election