IBADAN, NIGERIA – The internal crisis rocking the Oyo State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC) has taken a dramatic turn following a shocking revelation by the former Minister of Power, Mr. Adebayo Adelabu. The frontline politician has openly countered the official claims of the party's electoral committee, asserting that the total number of registered APC members across the entire state is fewer than 500,000.
Adelabu made the explosive assertion on Friday, May 22, 2026, in a strongly worded public statement signed and released to the media by his official press secretary, Comrade Femi Awogboro. The former minister's intervention comes at a highly sensitive time as the party struggles to manage the fallout from its just-concluded governorship primary election.
The former minister, who recently resigned his cabinet position in the federal government to focus entirely on contesting the Oyo APC governorship primary, has continued to fiercely dispute the outcome of the exercise. The primary election reportedly concluded with Senator Sharafadeen Alli being declared the winner, a result that Adelabu and his campaign organization have completely rejected, alleging widespread systemic manipulation, procedural inflation, and institutional bias.
In the official statement, Adelabu dismissed widespread reports and institutional claims that Senator Alli secured over 500,000 votes from party members to emerge as the party’s gubernatorial flagbearer for the general election. The former minister described the circulated figures as completely fraudulent, inaccurate, and logistically impossible under the party's current registration books.
He insisted with statutory authority that the actual total registered APC membership strength in Oyo State stands at exactly 153,640. He argued that it is mathematically impossible for a candidate to score over half a million votes in an internal primary election when the entire party database in the state does not contain up to 160,000 registered individuals.
Adelabu urged his teeming supporters, delegates, and regular party members across the state's 33 local government areas to remain completely calm and await the official, certified declaration of results by the national leadership of the party. He noted that the truth regarding the actual ballots cast would eventually be made bare through a thorough forensic audit of the process.
The statement further claimed that Adelabu enjoys overwhelming, verifiable grassroots support across the length and breadth of the state, based on the independent field data currently being collated by his campaign situation room directly from individual voting wards. His team maintains that if the genuine votes of the people are respected, his victory is guaranteed.
“Those in charge of the results need to be careful and not to be used by anyone to truncate or alter the results because it is already clear to us from what we are collating from each ward,” the statement from his media office cautioned.
The unfolding drama in the Oyo State APC has raised serious concerns among national party stakeholders, who fear that a prolonged legal and political battle could severely damage the party's chances in the general election. With Adelabu explicitly accusing the state party machinery of fabricating numbers to favor Senator Alli, analysts believe the national working committee will be forced to intervene immediately to resolve the data discrepancy and prevent a total implosion of the party structure in the state.
