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APC Primary Crisis Deepens as Lagos Market Leaders Threaten Street Protests — Iyaloja-General Says Grassroots Mandate "Must Not Be Stolen"
Iyaloja-General of Lagos State, Folashade Tinubu-Ojo, addressing journalists at her Alausa residence, flanked by market leaders.
The political temperature in Lagos rose sharply this week as market leaders — the foot soldiers of the ruling party's grassroots machinery — threatened to take their grievances to the streets. The warning came not from an opposition figure, but from the heart of the APC establishment: Folashade Tinubu-Ojo, the Iyaloja-General of Lagos State and daughter of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. From her residence in Alausa, Ikeja, she delivered a message that was part ultimatum, part lament: the mandate of the markets must not be stolen.
At the centre of the storm is a specific case — Olaide Mutiu Oladeebo of Agege Constituency II, who market leaders say was the overwhelming choice of traders and grassroots party members before the primary process was, in their words, disrupted. The details are murky, but the emotion is not. For the women who run Lagos' sprawling markets, the primaries were not just about candidates; they were about recognition. They turned out in numbers, they mobilised, and now they believe the party has repaid their loyalty with betrayal.
"We are not begging. We are demanding," Tinubu-Ojo said, her words calibrated to remind the party that market women are not a passive voting bloc but an organising force. She reaffirmed loyalty to the APC — a necessary caveat for someone whose political identity is inseparable from the ruling party — but she also made clear that loyalty has limits. The threat of street protests, even if not yet acted upon, is a political landmine. A march led by the Iyaloja-General against her own party's primary results would be a spectacle the APC can ill afford as it tries to project unity ahead of 2027.
The deeper tension here is about inclusion. Market leaders are not just seeking to overturn specific results; they are demanding a seat at the table — in candidate selection, in government appointments, in the distribution of the political rewards they feel their mobilisation work has earned. Tinubu-Ojo's statement was a reminder that in Lagos, the gap between the party's leadership and its grassroots enforcers is widening, and that the consequences of ignoring that gap could soon spill out of the markets and into the streets.
Stay tuned to Unuevbo TV for more on the APC primary crisis, grassroots political movements, and the shifting allegiances shaping the 2027 elections.
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