Oladipupo Adebutu, the Peoples Democratic Party governorship candidate in Ogun State, has waved aside his exclusion from the Independent National Electoral Commission’s list of candidates for the 2027 governorship election, describing it as a temporary distraction that will not derail his ambition. He spoke on Monday in Abeokuta while receiving more than 1,000 defectors from the All Progressives Congress into the PDP.
The defectors, led by a former member of the House of Representatives, Segun William, were received at the party’s state secretariat alongside PDP leaders, including its Ogun Central senatorial candidate, Iyabo Obasanjo. William said the group left the APC over dissatisfaction with the ruling party’s handling of governance in the state.
Adebutu told the gathering that he remained a bona fide member of the PDP and challenged those questioning his loyalty to produce evidence, asking, “At what stage did I leave or vacate the party?” He said he had been the party’s candidate in every election cycle for two decades, put his registration number in the recent membership exercise at 1536, and said the drive recorded more than 19,800 members in the state. He added that the PDP campaign had reached 12 of Ogun’s 20 local government areas and more than 140 of its 236 wards.
The controversy stems from INEC’s final list of candidates for the February 6, 2027 governorship elections, published earlier in October, which named contenders from 13 parties but left out Adebutu and his running mate, Yemi Sowunmi-Kolapo. The commission’s published documents did not give a reason for the omission. Adebutu has noted that the PDP’s candidates for the State Assembly, House of Representatives and Senate in Ogun all appeared on the relevant lists, and that only the governorship ticket was missing.
His position has since weakened. On 29 October, INEC cleared two other affected candidates, Isa Pantami of the PDP in Gombe and Aminu Gwarzo of the NDC in Kano, but rejected Adebutu’s petition seeking a review of his exclusion. That outcome left the PDP, for now, without a listed governorship candidate in a state it has contested closely for years.
The Ogun PDP has blamed the exclusion on what it called undue pressure from the APC on the electoral body, an allegation the commission has not addressed and which the ruling party has previously rejected. INEC has said, as a general rule, that parties which fail to meet membership register requirements may be unable to field affected candidates, though it has not tied that explanation specifically to Adebutu. The national leadership of the PDP has expressed confidence that the matter will be resolved.
The dispute revives a long record of contested candidacies around Adebutu. He lost the 2023 governorship election to Dapo Abiodun of the APC, who polled 276,298 votes to Adebutu’s 262,383, a margin of fewer than 14,000 votes, and he challenged the result at the tribunal. In earlier cycles his nomination was repeatedly caught in intra-party litigation, including a court ruling that nullified the primary that produced him and a prolonged tussle with the faction led by the late Buruji Kashamu over who owned the party’s ticket.
The 2027 race is an open contest, as Abiodun completes his second and final term on 29 May 2027. The APC has fielded Senator Solomon Adeola, popularly known as Yayi, from the Ogun West Senatorial District, whom Abiodun adopted as his preferred successor on the argument that the zone has never produced a governor since the state was created. Adeola’s running mate is Kudirat Adegunwa-Balogun. His emergence gives the ruling party an early, settled ticket while the main opposition is still fighting to get its candidate on the ballot.
For Adebutu, the immediate task is to reverse the exclusion through legal and administrative channels before campaigning can count for much. He has cast the defections and the grassroots tour as proof that his candidacy retains momentum. Whether INEC or the courts restore his name will decide if the PDP can mount a serious challenge in Ogun next February, or whether the exclusion hands the APC a clearer path to retaining Oke-Mosan.