[Op_Ed] O toge : The recurring decimal of Kwara politics (1) – By Abdullateef Ishowo

Setting the Stage

In mathematics, a recurring decimal is a sequence that repeats in perpetuity. It neither terminates nor deviates. Nigeria’s politics mirrors this exact formula: election cycles, grandiose promises, post-election rationalizations, corruption scandals, probes, and the ritualistic return to the ballot. The cycle is immutable. In Kwara, _O Toge_ has now been inscribed into that immutable sequence.

From the 1980s, the Yoruba admonition _“O Toge”_ — “Enough Is Enough” — has intermittently surfaced in Kwara’s political lexicon. Its full-throated eruption, however, came in 2019.

The Atta/Saraki rupture that birthed the infamous _“Salake”_ debacle of 1982/83, and the Lawal/Saraki confrontation that spawned _“Gbosa”_ in 2002/2003, were not isolated eruptions. They were foreshocks. They were rehearsals. They laid the groundwork for the 2019 political cataclysm.

If Kwara politics is synonymous with drama, then _O toge_ is the line that transcended sloganeering to become doctrine. It encapsulated the rage, disillusionment, and yearning for rupture that convulsed the state in 2019. It was more than a campaign chant. It was a mass insurrection at the ballot. It was the seismic event that extinguished the Saraki dynasty’s hegemony.

Seven years on, Kwara stands on the precipice of another political volte-face. The dramatis personae remain, but the alignments have been recast. Allies have transmuted into adversaries. Adversaries have forged expedient truces. The calculus is mutating.

At the vortex of this realignment stands Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, navigating the twilight of his constitutional tenure. The paradox is glaring: the very forces that midwifed the 2019 _O toge_ uprising are now engineering a fresh realignment.

Will _O toge_ harden into Kwara’s permanent political decimal? The answer will be determined between now and 2027.

The 2019 election was a watershed. Flying the APC banner, AbdulRazaq routed PDP’s Razak Atunwa: 331,546 votes to 114,754. A clean sweep across all 16 LGAs.

That triumph was not accidental. It was forged by a disparate coalition galvanized by a singular objective: the dismantling of an entrenched political oligarchy. _O toge_ prevailed because it alchemized individual grievances into a collective crusade.

That is the template for 2027. Political movements do not triumph on the fumes of incumbency fatigue alone. They triumph when fragmented resentment is forged into a credible alternative. That is the crucible the emerging Kwara configuration now faces.

The nascent coalition is replicating the 2019 blueprint: an amalgam of incongruent interests yoked together by opposition to the status quo. Its viability, however, hinges on variables in the immediate horizon.

Senator Saliu Mustapha’s defection from APC to PDP has detonated the incumbent’s arithmetic. The ripples are already manifest: the contortions over the deputy governorship slot, the frantic machinations to torpedo Mustapha’s candidacy, and a cascade of retaliatory maneuvers.

Mustapha’s exit was not spontaneous. It was the denouement of protracted internecine warfare within APC, exacerbated by the governor’s inept handling of succession politics and a primaries process that proved to be the last straw.

The evolution from G15 — once the governor’s inner caucus — to _The O toge Progressives (TOP)_, and subsequently into a PDP alignment, is not trivial. Securing tickets for its principals has fortified the opposition. It is a political tremor whose aftershocks will reverberate into 2027.

The emerging “Rainbow Coalition” is a study in political pragmatism. It unites actors who, under different circumstances, would be mortal enemies. But Nigerian politics is rarely ideological. It is transactional, tactical, and teleological.

This coalition is gaining momentum by the day. It is becoming bolder and acquiring popular legitimacy. The governor’s camp, meanwhile, is rattled but regrouping. Accusations are flying — the governor has fingered FCT Minister Nyesom Wike as the architect of the APC implosion in Kwara. Wike has responded with rhetorical artillery.

The question now is not if the ground will shift, but how? What transpires by 12pm, before 1pm on January 16, 2026 — the date circled by the Kwara Central Senator — will offer the first definitive signal.

Time, as ever, will tell.

Abdullateef Ishowo is the
Director, Media and Strategic Communication to Senator Saliu Mustapha.