₦airaland Forum

OGD Abandons Race After Sensing Imminent Defeat: The Noise Ends Where Political Reality Begins

By Tayo Mabeweje

The withdrawal of former Ogun State Governor, Senator Gbenga Daniel (OGD) from the Ogun East senatorial primary of the All Progressives Congress did not arrive as strategy—it landed like a punctured balloon after weeks of inflated political theatre, deflating noisily under the weight of its own contradictions.

For weeks, Ogun East was drenched in political thunder that produced no rain. The digital space became a storm of hashtags, cyber agitation, coordinated blogger attacks, and orchestrated narratives aimed at bending perception into illusion. Loyalists of OGD turned social media into a battlefield of echoes—where repetition was mistaken for reality, and volume was confused with victory.

But politics, unlike the internet, does not clap for noise.

It counts structure.

And structure, when it finally speaks, speaks without emotion.

At the centre of the storm was a sustained attempt to weaken the standing of Governor Dapo Abiodun through media pressure, selective storytelling, and carefully timed public commentary. Interviews and televised appearances—including widely referenced moments on platforms such as TVC—were weaponised as political instruments designed to rewrite perception and manufacture doubt.

Yet even the loudest microphone cannot drown the sound of political arithmetic.

What unfolded was a classic clash between illusion and institution—between online theatre and grassroots machinery. And when the curtain began to fall, it became painfully clear which one had substance.

As political strategist Joseph Nye once warned in a different context, “Power is not just what you have, but what others believe you have.” In Ogun East, belief evaporated the moment structure refused to cooperate with narrative.

The so-called momentum of OGD’s camp began to resemble a sandcastle built too close to the tide—impressive in appearance, but permanently vulnerable to the simplest wave of organised reality.

Then came the turning point: the boycott directive.

A political boycott is not a tactic. It is a retreat disguised as principle. It is the quiet folding of a hand that once tried to bluff the table. And in this case, it was the moment the noise stopped pretending to be strength.

As Abraham Lincoln once said, “You cannot escape the responsibility of tomorrow by evading it today.” The refusal to face a primary contest is, in itself, a political confession—one that speaks louder than any rally or press statement.

Another timeless warning comes from Niccolò Machiavelli: “It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.” But in this scenario, neither fear nor influence held ground—only avoidance remained, standing awkwardly in the place where confidence was once advertised.

And as Nigerian political thought has often echoed through generations of leadership struggle, Obafemi Awolowo’s disciplined reminder resounds: “The worth of a leader is tested in his ability to stand by principle when convenience demands escape.” Convenience, in this case, took the form of withdrawal.

Meanwhile, the APC structure in Ogun East continued its quiet consolidation around Governor Dapo Abiodun—not through noise, but through alignment; not through hashtags, but through hierarchy; not through propaganda, but through political gravity.

The cyber campaigns, blogger offensives, and coordinated attacks that once attempted to tilt perception against the governor dissolved into background noise—like drums beating in an empty hall after the audience has already left.

And that is the final irony of this episode: the louder the campaign became online, the quieter its impact became on the ground.

Because in politics, reality is a patient judge. It listens to everything—but remembers only structure.

In the end, Ogun East did not witness a defeat at the ballot.

It witnessed something more telling: a race abandoned before the starting gun, after weeks of shouting as though the finish line was already won.

And so the record stands—not as a contest lost, but as a contest never dared.

Because when political reality finally arrives, it does not argue with noise.

It simply replaces it.

Tayo Mabeweje is a Senior Special Assistant on Media to Governor Dapo Abiodun CON

What rubbish is this? Just playing with grammar without substance

Tayo Mabeweje is a Senior Special Assistant on Media to Governor Dapo Abiodun is on very hard substances. The person that posted this nonsense here is even on a combination of stronger banned substances. If they two of them do not stop what they are presently smoking, they will be on the streets nakked very very soon.

It's better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.