OPINION: Popoola’s Senatorial Ticket is Not a Comeback, Its a Coronation, Part 2
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OPINION: Popoola’s Senatorial Ticket is Not a Comeback, Its a Coronation, Part 2
The Popoola story did not end in 2018. If anything, that was when the real test began.
By 2019, Prince Saheed Olamilekan Popoola was already a frontliner in the Otoge struggle. He had stayed in the APC when others ran, but he had not cut ties with the past. He still maintained respect for Dr. Bukola Saraki and the dynasty, because in Kwara politics, you can fight a structure without losing your sense of history. At that time, Popoola was convinced of one thing: Kwara needed a fresh face, fresh ideas, and a break from old habits.
During the 2018 APC primaries, he had set his eyes on the House of Representatives ticket for Offa/Ifelodun/Oyun Federal Constituency. But politics, especially in Kwara, is also about sacrifice. In the sharing formula within the party, he stepped aside to allow his brother, Senator Lola Ashiru, to take the Kwara South Senatorial ticket. The understanding was clear. As the only surviving elected member of the 8th Assembly who remained in the APC, Popoola would return to the House and be considered for Speaker of the 9th Assembly. He took that deal as a party man.
He then threw himself into the campaign that brought Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq to power — a victory many described as the fruit of Otoge even if the path was not as clean as it looked. But the agreement did not hold. Despite being the most senior returning member, Popoola was denied the speakership. The governor ensured that one of his own proteges took the seat. For many, it was the first sign that Otoge was being rewritten by the very people it was meant to serve.
READ ALSO: OPINION: Popoola: They Isolated Him, Now They Must Face Him Part 1
Popoola did not sulk. A thoroughbred does not stop running because the track was changed. He went back to work. In the 9th Assembly, he was vocal, vibrant, and fearless. He legislated. He engaged his constituents. He defended the ideals that brought the APC to power.
Then the crack widened. The governor began to pick fights with almost everyone who made Otoge possible: Alhaji Lai Mohammed, Bashir Omolaja Bolarinwa, Chief Iyiola Akogun, Lukman Mustapha, and Saheed Popoola. The men and women who built the movement were being pushed to the margins. Popoola insisted on due process. For that, he was victimized. The leadership of the House, acting at the behest of the executive, suspended him. For over a year, he was kept out of the chamber.
But suspension could not suspend his relevance. While shut out of the Assembly, Popoola doubled down on the streets. He stayed with the people. He stayed with the true progressives. He and other Otoge gladiators made a quiet decision: they would continue their political journey outside the control of one man who had chosen to fight everyone.
At the height of the crisis, something unusual happened. Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, then the national leader of the APC, summoned all the Otoge gladiators to his home in Lagos. Each of them laid out their grievances. When it was Popoola’s turn, he was calm but direct. He told Tinubu how the governor had breached the agreement, how his people had been denied dividends of democracy, and how he had been suspended for more than a year by proteges of the same government he helped bring to power. That meeting changed the temperature, but it did not change the reality in Kwara.
By the build-up to 2023, Popoola made the hardest call of his career. He walked away from the APC. Alongside other gladiators, he picked the House of Representatives ticket under the SDP. It was considered a gamble. The SDP had no structure in Kwara. But Popoola had something stronger: the people.
He ran an inclusive campaign. Despite intimidation, harassment, and insults, he held his head high. On election day, he won Offa Local Government outright, and gave a strong showing in Oyun and Ifelodun. With an unpopular party on the ballot, he still proved a point: he owns the grassroots. He is a force.
Immediately after the election, with Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu now President, Popoola returned to the APC. It was not a surrender. It was a homecoming to a man and an ideology he admired. Yet even in the APC, the intimidation continued. It did not matter. The grassroots remained with him.
Then came the 2024 local government election, widely described across Kwara as flawed. Ahead of it, Popoola, alongside other Offa elites, made a bold declaration. He threw his weight behind the PDP candidate for Offa LG, Lukman Salahudeen. He said it openly: the APC would lose. And he worked to make it happen. Once again, he proved that when Popoola speaks, the grassroots listens.
For decades, he has remained that rare politician whose phone number is saved in the smallest villages across Kwara South. He has said, without apology, that while the Saraki leadership had its faults, the AbdulRazaq administration has been the worst in the history of Kwara. After wide consultations with his base, with elders, with youths, and with women, he made the final move: he dumped the APC for the PDP.
And the PDP received him like a returning general. Not as a defector looking for shelter, but as a political giant with structure, with history, and with proof. He vowed to prioritize the needs of Kwarans and to deliver the PDP project in the state. In what many in the party call a masterstroke, he has now been nominated as the PDP candidate for Kwara South Senatorial District.
This is not the story of a man looking for a party. This is the story of a party looking for a man.A man who was isolated and victimized by power, but never broken. A man who has never left his people, and whose people have never left him. A man who helped birth Otoge, survived its betrayal, and is now leading Otoge Reloaded.
In 2027, the ballot will carry a bigger responsibility. Kwara South will be asked to choose between memory and momentum. And standing on that ballot is a man who has fought dynasties, survived suspensions, won with weak parties, and still commands the streets.
The Otoge Crusader is back.
Only this time, he is not just fighting a system.
He is ready to lead one.
