By Emmanuel Daniji

The political dispute in Agege has taken another turn after former Agege Local Government Chairman Ganiyu Egunjobi and former Lagos House of Assembly aspirant Azeez Yusuf rejected their expulsion from the All Progressives Congress, saying they had already resigned from the party months earlier.

The Lagos APC announced their expulsion on September 23, accusing the two politicians of anti-party activities and disloyalty after they left the party and secured tickets to contest the Agege Constituencies I and II seats on the platform of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM).

But Egunjobi and Yusuf said the party’s action came weeks after they had formally ended their membership.

In a joint statement, they said they resigned from the APC in July 2026 and subsequently joined the APM. They described the September expulsion as belated and questioned how a political party could expel people who, according to them, had already resigned.

Their departure followed a dispute over the APC’s primary elections for the two Agege constituencies. Egunjobi contested the primary for Agege Constituency I, while Yusuf contested Constituency II.

The two said they believed they had won their respective primaries but were not given the party’s tickets. They said they submitted petitions, made representations and held press conferences in an effort to resolve the matter internally before eventually deciding to leave the APC.

The APC, however, has a different account of the sequence of events. The party said the two failed to secure its tickets and subsequently obtained nominations from another political party instead of remaining loyal to the APC or pursuing the party’s available avenues of redress. It said the action amounted to anti-party activity and disloyalty and invoked Article 9(5)(II) of its constitution in expelling them.

The dispute has now moved beyond the question of the primary elections to the status of the two politicians within the APC.

Egunjobi and Yusuf maintain that their resignation came first and that their movement to the APM was already public before the APC announced their expulsion. They said the party was attempting to rewrite a political development that had already taken place.

Despite leaving the APC, the two also said they remained committed to the political ambitions of President Bola Tinubu, Lagos Deputy Governor Obafemi Hamzat, Senator Idiat Adebule and Lagos House of Assembly Speaker Mudashiru Obasa.

They said they would continue to work for what they described as the Tinubu-Hamzat political project in Agege while pursuing their own Assembly ambitions under the APM.

The two politicians have now emerged as APM candidates for Agege Constituencies I and II ahead of the 2027 Lagos State House of Assembly election. Their move means Egunjobi and Yusuf will contest the seats against the candidates recognised by the APC.

For their supporters in Agege, the immediate issue is no longer simply an internal APC disagreement. The two politicians have chosen another platform and are preparing to take their political battle into the 2027 election, while the APC maintains that they breached the obligations of party membership before their expulsion.