Tomorrow on Monday Discourse with Nasiru Ibrahim, my National Single Window series Part Four drops: ‘The Green Port Imperative: Beyond the Analogue Horizon.’

True automation cannot stop at front-end software like the new B’Odogwu Customs System.

It must extend to the hard, physical operations on the ground.

You cannot claim to build a modern maritime gateway while thousands of diesel-guzzling trucks remain trapped in manual bottlenecks along the Apapa and Tin Can access corridors.

Tomorrow, we look past the paper declarations and audit the raw infrastructure execution required to save our maritime future.

Lock your dials on this platform: The clock is ticking.

Funso Olojo, Editor 

The defeat of Asiwaju Munirudeen Bola Oyebamiji in the August 15th, 2026  Osun governorship election may ultimately be remembered as more than a failure at the ballot box.

It was, in many respects, the latest chapter in the long-running struggle for control, influence and political direction within the Osun State chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC).

Oyebamiji fought a formidable campaign and came within striking distance of Governor Ademola Adeleke.

But when the votes were finally counted, Adeleke emerged with 511,067 votes against Oyebamiji’s 444,815, winning by 66,252 votes and taking 19 of the state’s 30 local government areas, while the APC candidate won 11.

For a party that entered the contest determined to reclaim Osun, the result raises a painful question: Did the APC lose the election at the polling booths—or did it lose vital ground much earlier, in the battles within its own ranks?

The evidence suggests that the answer is a combination of both.

The ghost of 2022

The greatest weakness of Osun APC has always been its inability to completely bury its internal wars.

The party’s 2022 experience remains instructive. The feud between the camps associated with former Governor Gboyega Oyetola and former Governor Rauf Aregbesola fractured the APC before the election.

Political analysts subsequently identified the division within the party as one of the factors that contributed to Oyetola’s defeat by Adeleke.

Four years later, the APC entered another election under the shadow of unresolved factional relationships.

This time, the principal fault lines included the longstanding rivalry involving Oyetola and former deputy governor and former APC National Secretary, Iyiola Omisore.

By mid-2026, the party was still making efforts to reconcile the two camps. A peace meeting reportedly brokered by former APC National Chairman Bisi Akande was held to resolve the lingering rift between Omisore and Oyetola.

That fact alone was significant.
A political party preparing for a major governorship election should ideally be discussing how to defeat its opponent, mobilise voters and sell its candidate.

Instead, substantial political energy was still being expended on reconciling influential actors within the party.

Oyebamiji inherited a fractured and divided house. Oyebamiji himself was not necessarily the cause of the crisis.

Indeed, he emerged as the APC’s consensus candidate after an internal process in which he was widely regarded as acceptable across several political interests within the party.

His candidacy therefore offered the APC an opportunity to put its factional history behind it.

But choosing a consensus candidate and building a genuinely united political machine around him are two different things.

The APC needed all its major blocs to translate their individual structures into one coordinated campaign organisation.

The challenge was not simply getting party leaders to appear together at rallies. It was ensuring that their supporters, ward leaders, local government structures and grassroots networks were equally committed to the same candidate.

That is where the war within became electorally consequential.

The Omisore question

Few issues illustrated the APC’s internal dilemma more clearly than the place of Omisore in the campaign.

Omisore remained an important political figure in Osun APC, but reports of defections by some of his associates raised questions about the extent of his influence and whether the party had successfully integrated all its competing tendencies ahead of the election.

In June, THISDAY reported the resignation of Kolawole Ismaila, described as one of the strong pillars in Omisore’s camp.

Other reports similarly documented defections and resignations from the APC as the election approached.

For an opposition party trying to unseat an incumbent, every prominent defection mattered—not necessarily because one politician alone could determine an election, but because defections could signal deeper dissatisfaction among networks of ward leaders, local organisers and grassroots loyalists.

The danger was that the APC could appear united at the top while remaining fragmented below.

A party fighting yesterday’s battles

The deeper problem was structural.
Osun APC spent years fighting over who controlled the party, who should determine its leadership and which political tendency should dominate its affairs.

That history did not disappear merely because the party selected Oyebamiji.

Indeed, earlier in 2026, THISDAY described the Osun APC as a party “fighting itself”, with its internal disagreement becoming a major political issue ahead of the election.

The irony is striking.
Oyebamiji was campaigning to reclaim the Government House from Adeleke, but the APC itself had not completely resolved the struggle for ownership of the political house.

That distinction matters in Nigerian elections, where victory is often determined not only by the popularity of a candidate but by the efficiency of the party’s grassroots machinery.

Adeleke exploited what APC left unresolved
While the APC wrestled with internal cohesion, Adeleke had an important advantage: incumbency and an established grassroots political structure.

The election ultimately became a battle between a governor seeking another term and an opposition candidate attempting to build a coalition broad enough to remove him.

Oyebamiji ran a competitive race. But defeating an incumbent in Osun required more than an attractive candidate and federal backing.

It required an exceptionally disciplined statewide machine.

The APC had federal visibility and national political weight. But Adeleke had the advantage of incumbency, local visibility and a political family whose influence remains deeply rooted in Osun politics.

The result showed the limits of federal political leverage when it is not matched by complete grassroots cohesion.

The numbers tell the story
The final figures make the defeat difficult to dismiss as a narrow accident.

Adeleke’s 511,067 votes represented a substantial statewide mobilisation.

Oyebamiji’s 444,815 votes were also significant and demonstrated that the APC remained a powerful force in Osun.

But the 66,252-vote gap was large enough to show that the APC still had considerable work to do before it could translate its strength into victory.

The geographical spread was equally revealing.

Adeleke carried 19 LGAs, while Oyebamiji won 11.

The APC was therefore not annihilated. It was beaten by an incumbent who was able to assemble a broader electoral coalition.

That distinction is important because it means the APC’s defeat was not simply a rejection of Oyebamiji.

Rather, the result suggests that the party had the capacity to compete but failed to convert that capacity into the winning coalition required to capture the state.

The lesson from 2022 was not fully learned.
Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of the defeat is that the warning signs had been visible.

In 2022, the APC lost the governorship amid bitter internal divisions. Analysts explicitly linked the party’s internal crisis to its electoral setback.

In 2026, the party again entered an election with questions about internal cohesion.

There were even public calls from within the party for unity.

In May, APC chieftain Olatunbosun Oyintiloye said unity among party members was crucial to securing victory in the August 15 election.

That warning now looks prophetic.
The party apparently understood the problem. What it struggled to achieve was a sufficiently deep and lasting solution.

It would be unfair to blame everything on the APC crisis.

Yet attributing Oyebamiji’s defeat entirely to internal APC politics would be too simplistic.
Elections are multidimensional.

Adeleke’s performance as incumbent mattered. His campaign strategy mattered. His political network mattered.

Voter perceptions of the state government mattered. The candidates’ individual appeal mattered. Local political calculations mattered.

The election was also fought in an environment characterised by intense political competition, defections, court battles, accusations and counter-accusations.

There was also the presence of the ADC’s Najeem Salam, who competed for the same broad political space and potentially affected the distribution of opposition votes.

Therefore, the APC’s internal crisis should be seen not as the only reason for defeat, but as a force that weakened the party’s ability to maximise its other advantages.

The painful irony of the campaign

Perhaps the greatest irony is that Oyebamiji had entered the race as a unifying figure.
His emergence was meant to provide the APC with a candidate around whom the different tendencies could rally.

He was not carrying the baggage of the old political wars in the same way as some of the party’s older combatants.

But a candidate can only unite a party to the extent that the party’s leaders are prepared to subordinate personal ambitions to collective victory.

That appears to have been the central challenge.

The APC needed its leaders to make Oyebamiji’s victory bigger than their individual political calculations.

The result suggests that the process was incomplete.The real loser may be the old APC structure.

Oyebamiji has lost the governorship election, but the larger question concerns the future of Osun APC.

The party remains competitive. Its candidate secured 444,815 votes—an impressive figure that shows the APC cannot be dismissed in Osun politics.

But the defeat has exposed a fundamental weakness. The APC cannot continue to approach every governorship election as another contest between old factions.

If the party wants to win in Osun in the January Presidential election and other future elections, it must move from factional politics to institutional politics.

That means building a party structure in which ward leaders matter as much as political godfathers; where defeated aspirants genuinely work for the candidate; where former office holders do not operate parallel structures; and where reconciliation happens months before an election—not weeks before polling day.

Oyebamiji’s defeat is therefore a warning.
The APC’s problem in Osun is not a shortage of politicians.

It is a shortage of political cohesion.
The party has influential personalities, experienced former governors, ministers, senators, former national officers and a large grassroots base.

Yet these assets become liabilities when they are deployed in competing directions.

The August 15 election has once again demonstrated a brutal rule of Nigerian politics: A divided opposition can have the better candidate and still lose to an incumbent.

Oyebamiji came close. But close was not enough.

Adeleke’s 511,067 votes against Oyebamiji’s 444,815 have now written another chapter in Osun’s political history.

For the APC, the message from the electorate is unmistakable.

The party cannot keep fighting yesterday’s battles and expect to win tomorrow’s election.

If Osun APC fails to settle its internal wars, rebuild trust among its factions and create a genuinely united grassroots structure, the defeat of Oyebamiji may not be remembered as an isolated electoral setback.

It could become a pattern.
And that would make the real casualty of the August 15 election not Bola Oyebamiji alone but the APC’s unfinished struggle to become a truly united political force in Osun.

Funso OLOJO, Editor 

For decades, the Idiroko border corridor has existed at the intersection of legitimate commerce and the informal economy, serving simultaneously as a gateway for legitimate trans-border trade and a lucrative passage for smugglers exploiting Nigeria’s long and porous western frontier.

But that business environment appears to be undergoing a gradual transformation.

At the centre of the emerging change is the Ogun I Area Command of the Nigeria Customs Service, where the Acting Customs Area Controller, Deputy Comptroller Olukayode Afeni, has adopted a more aggressive intelligence-led enforcement strategy aimed at altering the risk-reward equation that has historically sustained illicit commerce along the corridor.

Afeni’s philosophy is relatively straightforward: legitimate trade should be facilitated, but smuggling, drug trafficking and other forms of economic sabotage must become increasingly difficult, expensive and dangerous.

The latest operational scorecard presented by the Command on Thursday, August 13th, 2026 provides an insight into the scale of that campaign.

The Command paraded seizures with a combined Duty Paid Value of N3.574 billion, covering agricultural products, petroleum products, textiles, consumer goods and narcotics.

Among the intercepted items were 2,339 bags of foreign parboiled rice, 70 cartons of basmati rice, 6,035 parcels of Ghana Loud/Indica, 30 bags of foreign sugar, 11,450 litres of PMS in kegs, 1,750 litres of PMS in drums, 30 kegs of diesel, 100 bags of fertilizer and 67 bales of second-hand clothing.

The seizure list also included thousands of pieces of new clothing, drinks, cosmetics, hair accessories, fire extinguishers, purses and other consumer products.

But the significance of the figures does not lie merely in their monetary value. They provide an indication of the variety of commercial activities that the Command is now confronting along the border—and of the extent to which enforcement is beginning to influence the operating environment for both legitimate traders and illicit networks.

The Idiroko corridor has never been simply a Customs enforcement zone. It is a commercial ecosystem connecting communities and businesses on both sides of the Nigeria-Benin frontier.

For legitimate traders, the border provides access to markets, goods and opportunities for cross-border commerce.

For smugglers, however, the same geography presents opportunities to bypass formal import procedures and exploit differences in prices, taxes, restrictions and market demand between the two countries.
That is where Afeni’s intervention becomes significant.

Rather than viewing seizures as isolated enforcement events, the current strategy increasingly appears designed to disrupt the underlying business model of smuggling.

Every intercepted truck, vehicle, petroleum consignment, rice shipment or narcotics parcel represents not only a seizure but a potential interruption of a supply chain.

The objective is to make illegal trade less predictable and less profitable.

Rice and the economics of local production

Foreign parboiled rice remains one of the most visible commodities in the border enforcement equation.

The interception of more than 2,300 bags in the latest operation reinforces the persistent pressure on domestic rice production from illicit imports.

Afeni’s argument is that smuggling should be viewed through the prism of economic protection rather than merely customs prohibition.

When imported rice enters Nigeria outside the approved channels, it competes directly with Nigerian farmers, millers and distributors without necessarily bearing the same regulatory and fiscal obligations.

For a government attempting to strengthen domestic agricultural production, such competition can undermine investment and discourage farmers from expanding production.

The Ogun I campaign therefore places border enforcement within the broader question of Nigeria’s food-security strategy.
In Afeni’s formulation, protecting the border is also protecting the farmer.

The narcotics economy

If rice represents the agricultural dimension of the border challenge, narcotics represent its darker security dimension.

The Command’s interception of 6,035 parcels of Ghana Loud/Indica in the latest operation is significant, but the larger figure disclosed by Afeni is even more revealing.

From January to date, he said, Ogun I has handed over 32,412 parcels of hard drugs and 92 sacks of raw Cannabis sativa to the NDLEA Idiroko Special Command.

That figure places narcotics enforcement firmly among the Command’s major operational priorities.

It also demonstrates why border security increasingly requires agencies to work beyond traditional institutional boundaries.

Customs officers may intercept the shipment, but the investigation, drug intelligence and prosecution process require the specialised capabilities of the NDLEA and other security agencies.

The formal handover of the seized narcotics during Thursday’s event therefore symbolised the growing importance of inter-agency collaboration in securing the corridor.

The border as an export gateway

Perhaps one of the less discussed aspects of the Ogun I story is the Command’s export performance.

While considerable attention is naturally attracted by seizures, the Command also recorded 10,110 metric tonnes of exports, with a Free On Board value of N2.594 billion.
White talc, crushed thermal coal and CNG were identified as the principal drivers of the export volume.

That statistic is important because it challenges the perception of Idiroko principally as a route for imported goods.
The corridor is also capable of serving as a platform for Nigerian exports.

This creates a potentially important policy distinction. The objective of effective border management should not be to suppress cross-border commerce; rather, it should be to differentiate legitimate commerce from illicit trade and create an environment where compliant businesses can operate with greater certainty.

For Customs, that means enforcement and trade facilitation must move together.

Revenue from the corridor

The Command’s fiscal contribution also offers another measure of its economic relevance.
In July alone, Ogun I collected N90.066 million from baggage assessments, auctions of perishable items, PMS and other charges.

Although the figure is modest when compared with the revenue generated by Nigeria’s major seaport commands, it illustrates the multiple revenue streams available within the border environment.

More importantly, it demonstrates that the border economy extends beyond the conventional importation of goods.

A new risk calculation for smugglers

The central question surrounding Afeni’s tenure may therefore not be how many seizures the Command records in a particular month.

It may be whether the enforcement campaign is succeeding in changing the underlying calculation made by those who contemplate using the Idiroko corridor for illegal trade.

For years, smuggling has survived because its potential returns could outweigh the risks of interception.

That equation changes when intelligence improves, surveillance becomes more effective, inter-agency coordination becomes stronger and seized goods are followed by investigation and prosecution.

Afeni’s repeated warning that the Command intends to make Ogun I “hostile” to smugglers is therefore more than rhetoric.

It represents an attempt to change the commercial environment in which illicit operators make their decisions.
But legitimate trade must remain protected

There is, however, another side to the equation. Idiroko’s importance cannot be measured only by the volume of contraband intercepted.

Thousands of Nigerians depend on legitimate cross-border commercial activity, while manufacturers, exporters, transporters, farmers and traders require an efficient and predictable border environment.

This makes Afeni’s appeal to the media to distinguish legitimate trade from illicit activity particularly important.

An aggressive enforcement regime that succeeds in deterring smuggling but inadvertently discourages legitimate commerce would produce an incomplete outcome.

The real measure of success would be a corridor where legitimate traders face greater certainty while smugglers face greater uncertainty.

That distinction will be critical to the long-term economic impact of the current enforcement drive.

From border enforcement to economic protection

Afeni’s presentation ultimately places the Ogun I Command at the intersection of three major national priorities: security, economic protection and trade facilitation.

The seizure of foreign rice speaks to agricultural protection.
The interception of narcotics speaks to public safety and national security.

The export figures point towards the untapped commercial potential of the corridor.
The revenue figures demonstrate its fiscal relevance.

Taken together, the figures suggest that what is happening at Ogun I is bigger than a succession of seizure announcements.
It is a contest over the character of the Idiroko border economy itself.

Whether the emerging model can permanently shift the corridor from an environment where illicit commerce flourishes to one where legitimate trans-border trade becomes the dominant business model will depend on the sustainability of enforcement, the efficiency of Customs procedures, infrastructure, inter-agency cooperation and the willingness of border communities to support lawful commerce.

For now, however, Afeni appears determined to push the equation in one direction.
Make legitimate trade easier to identify and protect—and make smuggling increasingly difficult to sustain.

That could ultimately prove to be the most consequential change taking place along the Idiroko corridor.