In a statement made available to pressmen in Ibadan today, Thursday, October 15, 2026, the Director-General of the Allied People’s Movement (APM) Campaign Council in Ibadan North-East Local Government and Executive Chairman of the Local Government, Hon. Engr. Ibrahim Akintayo (OMUYES), declared that the youths will decide the 2027 general election. “This is an election that the youths will decide in a major way. They are the largest part of our voters and the most affected by the economic realities of this country. They will not be swayed by noise or recycled promises. Old gimmicks are for the gullible,” he said.
Reacting to the reported defection of members of Team Arapaja and the Bayo Adelabu Foundation to the All Progressives Congress (APC), Akintayo described the talk of a political earthquake in Ibadan North-East as exaggerated. He insisted that those involved were already APC members who had merely changed their political leader, not their party. “Let Arapaja show us the people he claims to have brought under his control. Who are they? Where are their structures? What wards do they represent? Let the people see their faces and judge for themselves,” he challenged.
He said Ambassador Taofeek Oladejo Arapaja has a long habit of moving from one party to another. According to him, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) gave Arapaja the platform on which he became a member of the House of Representatives, Deputy Governor of Oyo State and Nigeria’s Ambassador to Jordan. He claimed Arapaja later left the PDP for the APC, and then moved from the APC to the African Democratic Congress (ADC). “A man like that cannot lecture our youths on loyalty or political direction,” he said.
Akintayo recalled that Arapaja was in the ADC when Engr. Seyi Makinde won the 2019 governorship election on the platform of the PDP, and that the governor nonetheless later showed him mercy by lifting him out of political relegation.
“The governor could have left him in the cold, but he showed him mercy. That is the kind of leader Makinde is. Yet today, Arapaja is the one making noise about political control,” he said. He also asked Arapaja to name the people from Ibadan North-East who benefited from his years in the House of Representatives, as Deputy Governor and as Ambassador. “We want names, not political noise,” Hon. Akintayo said.
Describing 2027 as a contest between two groups of Nigerians, Akintayo said that on one side are the hungry masses whom, in his view, the APC-led federal government has impoverished. On the other, he said, are the beneficiaries of the Oyo State Government under his administration in Ibadan North-East and that of His Excellency, Engr. Seyi Makinde. “The young people know who has made life harder and who has put something in their hands. Politicians of the old order like Ambassador Arapaja should go and chill, and allow a new generation to take charge,” he said.
Akintayo concluded that the good people of Oyo State will vote en masse for Hon. Bimbo Adekanmbi of the APM because of their desire for continuity of good governance. “The people of Oyo State have seen the dividends of good governance and they want it to continue,” he said, adding that the APM would keep up its grassroots mobilisation, with the youths at the centre, ahead of the 2027 general elections.
Signed:
Hon.Ibrahim Akintayo (OMUYES)
Executive Chairman, Ibadan North-East Local Government
Director-General, Ibadan North-East APM Campaign Council.
