In the story of Cain and Abel, the Bible gives us one of humanity’s earliest accounts of how rivalry can turn kinship into hostility. The tragedy is not simply that one brother killed another. It is that envy can make a person regard the success of someone close to him as a personal injury. Something of that drama is now happening in Kwara State, where Senator Saliu Mustapha, who once stood firmly within the political camp that produced Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, has moved from the All Progressives Congress to the Peoples Democratic Party and emerged as its candidate for the Kwara Central senatorial election. He will face Gov. AbdulRazaq, who is seeking the seat on the APC platform.The development is significant precisely because Sen. Mustapha is no outsider. He was an important participant in the movement that brought Gov. AbdulRazaq to power. But the most curious element is not the defection itself; politicians defect, alliances change, yesterday’s ally becomes today’s opponent. What deserves scrutiny is the senator’s insistence, after decamping, that his loyalty to President Bola Tinubu remains intact, even as he now contests against the President’s own party in Kwara Central. That position is legally possible, but politics is a theatre of perception, and voters are entitled to ask what changed, and why the voice still claims to be Jacob’s while the hands have become Esau’s.I became interested in the matter after watching a TVC interview granted by the Commissioner for Education, Dr Lawal Olohungbebe, and the heated exchanges that followed across Kwara’s social-media communities. What should have been a policy argument quickly descended into personal abuse. That is troubling, because political disagreement does not require abandoning political ethics. How citizens debate public affairs eventually becomes the political culture they create.The recurring grievance advanced by some political actors is that Gov. AbdulRazaq has not sufficiently “carried them along.” The phrase deserves interrogation. Should the government be measured by how many politicians receive appointments and contracts, or by whether public resources become public value? There is nothing wrong with seeking inclusion; politics requires coalition-building. But there is a point at which inclusion curdles into entitlement, and entitlement becomes a pretext for rebellion. A government should not become a patronage system in which every supporter expects compensation in the form of office and/or a ticket.Mallam AbdulRazaq’s willingness to place professionals and younger appointees in positions of responsibility complicates the argument that competence has been sacrificed simply because established actors did not receive the access they wanted. This does not place the administration beyond criticism, nor should representation be mistaken for performance. But it is a genuine feature of how the government has staffed itself, and it deserves to be weighed rather than waved away.There is also an irony worth sitting with. The Otoge movement that swept away Kwara’s old political order in 2019 was presented as a revolt against a system many felt had grown entrenched and unresponsive. Mallam Saliu Mustapha himself played a significant role in that realignment after being disqualified from the APC governorship contest, subsequently throwing his support, and reportedly his campaign office, behind Mallam AbdulRazaq’s candidacy. That history makes today’s confrontation more consequential, because it raises a question larger than either man: was Otoge fundamentally about changing the political order, or was it also, for some participants, a vehicle through which individual fortunes were expected to improve? That question should not be answered cynically; political movements are usually coalitions of ideals, grievances and ambitions at once. But when the argument for change becomes an argument for personal reward, the movement risks reproducing the very culture it claimed to oppose. A revolution that changes who occupies the room without changing the habits of those who occupy it has achieved succession, not transformation.And those claims that particular individuals signed undertakings concerning how many terms they would serve should be treated with the same caution: distinguished from what can be independently established through documentary evidence, and reported no further than the evidence itself allows. What can reasonably be examined is the broader principle. Should political loyalty be understood as a contract for future personal reward, or as a temporary alliance built around a shared public objective? The answer says much about the maturity of our democracy.Related NewsThe inevitability of an opposition coalitionFubara signs N1.84tn budget, thanks Wike, lawmakersCampaign billboard removal sparks Kwara PDP, agency rowPerformance gives us a firmer ground for judgment than grievance does. When Gov. AbdulRazaq took office in 2019, Kwara’s Universal Basic Education Board had been effectively locked out of federal support: the state had been blacklisted from accessing UBEC matching grants since 2013, after allegations that an earlier tranche meant for school infrastructure had been diverted instead. By his own account (The Comm. for Education, Hon. Olohungbebe), the administration inherited a N450 million counterpart-funding backlog. It cleared it, a deliberate, gradual repayment that eventually reopened the state’s access to federal intervention funds it had been shut out of for six years. The scale of what followed is not disputable in the way the earlier controversy remains: the government has since recruited over eight thousand SUBEB staff, more than seven thousand of them classroom teachers, offset billions of naira in inherited salary arrears owed to teachers and local government workers, and renovated in excess of six hundred public schools across all sixteen local government areas, alongside new digital literacy centres and a structured literacy programme, KwaraLEARN, built around tablets and continuous teacher coaching. The federal House of Representatives later commended the state’s handling of UBEC funds as a model departure from the diversion that had triggered the earlier blacklist. None of this retroactively settles who was responsible for the 2013 shortfall, and this essayist has no business adjudicating that contested history in a paragraph. What can be stated plainly is what came after: a sustained run of results. Kwara’s public school debate team has now been Nigeria’s reigning national champion since 2021, reaching the World School Debate Championship quarter-finals in Singapore in 2024 before going further still, in December 2025, winning the International Junior Secondary School Debate Championship outright in Kuala Lumpur, defeating Cambodia in the final among sixteen competing countries, and then adding the Nigerian Presidential School Debate in Lagos for good measure. AbdulRazaq has rewarded each cohort of winners in turn, including two million naira apiece for the students behind the Malaysia and Lagos double, with their tutors similarly recognised. A politician may dislike the governor and still concede that a debate trophy, won four years running by children from public schools that were once blacklisted out of federal support entirely, is not an accident of luck.It was therefore revealing to hear “carrying us along” repeatedly invoked in that interview’s aftermath. There is a legitimate case for consultation, but a citizen should not need to belong to a political network to benefit from a functioning government. Roads, schools, water and security do not belong to godfathers. They belong to the people, and a democracy matures precisely to the extent that its citizens learn to separate evidence from allegiance.The question of succession within Kwara’s political geography carries its own irony worth stating honestly. Governor AbdulRazaq had publicly endorsed Abdulfatai Yahya Seriki as his preferred successor days before the APC primary. The party’s base did not follow him; Speaker Yakubu Danladi-Salihu instead won convincingly, polling 94,990 votes to Seriki’s 41,700, amid youth protests against the governor’s preferred candidate. That a sitting governor’s own choice was overruled by his party’s delegates, and that he accepted the outcome rather than contesting it, says something creditable about the limits he has been willing to observe. Kwara North has never produced a governor since 1999, while Kwara Central and Kwara South have shared the office between them. Zoning is not a constitutional entitlement, and arithmetic should never override merit, but where a section of a state has been consistently excluded from its highest office, a governor’s and a party’s willingness to let that arithmetic assert itself, even against its own (governor’s) wishes, is not the worst instinct a democracy can display. It is called equity and fairness.The contest between Mustapha and AbdulRazaq should not be reduced to a quarrel between former allies. Mustapha has every democratic right to leave the APC, join the PDP, and contest the election. AbdulRazaq has an equally legitimate right to defend his record and seek a new mandate, this time in the Senate. The real issue is whether Kwara’s politics will remain a marketplace where loyalty is exchanged for anticipated reward, or whether office will increasingly be judged by what it delivers.Cain’s question to God, after the blood was already spilled, was whether he was his brother’s keeper. Kwara’s politicians might usefully ask an earlier, less guilty version of that question now, before any blood (God forbid) is spilled at the ballot: whether the coalition they are guarding is one they still believe in, or simply one they expect to be repaid by. Kwarans, watching both brothers argue over the inheritance, are not a footnote to that argument. Kwarans are the reason the field was worth tilling in the first place.The conversation does not end here. You can continue it with me on X via @folorunso_adisa, LinkedIn: Folorunso Fatai Adisa, or on Facebook at Folorunso Fatai Adisa. The development is significant precisely because Sen. Mustapha is no outsider. He was an important participant in the movement that brought Gov. AbdulRazaq to power. But the most curious element is not the defection itself; politicians defect, alliances change, yesterday’s ally becomes today’s opponent. What deserves scrutiny is the senator’s insistence, after decamping, that his loyalty to President Bola Tinubu remains intact, even as he now contests against the President’s own party in Kwara Central. That position is legally possible, but politics is a theatre of perception, and voters are entitled to ask what changed, and why the voice still claims to be Jacob’s while the hands have become Esau’s.I became interested in the matter after watching a TVC interview granted by the Commissioner for Education, Dr Lawal Olohungbebe, and the heated exchanges that followed across Kwara’s social-media communities. What should have been a policy argument quickly descended into personal abuse. That is troubling, because political disagreement does not require abandoning political ethics. How citizens debate public affairs eventually becomes the political culture they create.The recurring grievance advanced by some political actors is that Gov. AbdulRazaq has not sufficiently “carried them along.” The phrase deserves interrogation. Should the government be measured by how many politicians receive appointments and contracts, or by whether public resources become public value? There is nothing wrong with seeking inclusion; politics requires coalition-building. But there is a point at which inclusion curdles into entitlement, and entitlement becomes a pretext for rebellion. A government should not become a patronage system in which every supporter expects compensation in the form of office and/or a ticket.Mallam AbdulRazaq’s willingness to place professionals and younger appointees in positions of responsibility complicates the argument that competence has been sacrificed simply because established actors did not receive the access they wanted. This does not place the administration beyond criticism, nor should representation be mistaken for performance. But it is a genuine feature of how the government has staffed itself, and it deserves to be weighed rather than waved away.There is also an irony worth sitting with. The Otoge movement that swept away Kwara’s old political order in 2019 was presented as a revolt against a system many felt had grown entrenched and unresponsive. Mallam Saliu Mustapha himself played a significant role in that realignment after being disqualified from the APC governorship contest, subsequently throwing his support, and reportedly his campaign office, behind Mallam AbdulRazaq’s candidacy. That history makes today’s confrontation more consequential, because it raises a question larger than either man: was Otoge fundamentally about changing the political order, or was it also, for some participants, a vehicle through which individual fortunes were expected to improve? That question should not be answered cynically; political movements are usually coalitions of ideals, grievances and ambitions at once. But when the argument for change becomes an argument for personal reward, the movement risks reproducing the very culture it claimed to oppose. A revolution that changes who occupies the room without changing the habits of those who occupy it has achieved succession, not transformation.And those claims that particular individuals signed undertakings concerning how many terms they would serve should be treated with the same caution: distinguished from what can be independently established through documentary evidence, and reported no further than the evidence itself allows. What can reasonably be examined is the broader principle. Should political loyalty be understood as a contract for future personal reward, or as a temporary alliance built around a shared public objective? The answer says much about the maturity of our democracy.Related NewsThe inevitability of an opposition coalitionFubara signs N1.84tn budget, thanks Wike, lawmakersCampaign billboard removal sparks Kwara PDP, agency rowPerformance gives us a firmer ground for judgment than grievance does. When Gov. AbdulRazaq took office in 2019, Kwara’s Universal Basic Education Board had been effectively locked out of federal support: the state had been blacklisted from accessing UBEC matching grants since 2013, after allegations that an earlier tranche meant for school infrastructure had been diverted instead. By his own account (The Comm. for Education, Hon. Olohungbebe), the administration inherited a N450 million counterpart-funding backlog. It cleared it, a deliberate, gradual repayment that eventually reopened the state’s access to federal intervention funds it had been shut out of for six years. The scale of what followed is not disputable in the way the earlier controversy remains: the government has since recruited over eight thousand SUBEB staff, more than seven thousand of them classroom teachers, offset billions of naira in inherited salary arrears owed to teachers and local government workers, and renovated in excess of six hundred public schools across all sixteen local government areas, alongside new digital literacy centres and a structured literacy programme, KwaraLEARN, built around tablets and continuous teacher coaching. The federal House of Representatives later commended the state’s handling of UBEC funds as a model departure from the diversion that had triggered the earlier blacklist. None of this retroactively settles who was responsible for the 2013 shortfall, and this essayist has no business adjudicating that contested history in a paragraph. What can be stated plainly is what came after: a sustained run of results. Kwara’s public school debate team has now been Nigeria’s reigning national champion since 2021, reaching the World School Debate Championship quarter-finals in Singapore in 2024 before going further still, in December 2025, winning the International Junior Secondary School Debate Championship outright in Kuala Lumpur, defeating Cambodia in the final among sixteen competing countries, and then adding the Nigerian Presidential School Debate in Lagos for good measure. AbdulRazaq has rewarded each cohort of winners in turn, including two million naira apiece for the students behind the Malaysia and Lagos double, with their tutors similarly recognised. A politician may dislike the governor and still concede that a debate trophy, won four years running by children from public schools that were once blacklisted out of federal support entirely, is not an accident of luck.It was therefore revealing to hear “carrying us along” repeatedly invoked in that interview’s aftermath. There is a legitimate case for consultation, but a citizen should not need to belong to a political network to benefit from a functioning government. Roads, schools, water and security do not belong to godfathers. They belong to the people, and a democracy matures precisely to the extent that its citizens learn to separate evidence from allegiance.The question of succession within Kwara’s political geography carries its own irony worth stating honestly. Governor AbdulRazaq had publicly endorsed Abdulfatai Yahya Seriki as his preferred successor days before the APC primary. The party’s base did not follow him; Speaker Yakubu Danladi-Salihu instead won convincingly, polling 94,990 votes to Seriki’s 41,700, amid youth protests against the governor’s preferred candidate. That a sitting governor’s own choice was overruled by his party’s delegates, and that he accepted the outcome rather than contesting it, says something creditable about the limits he has been willing to observe. Kwara North has never produced a governor since 1999, while Kwara Central and Kwara South have shared the office between them. Zoning is not a constitutional entitlement, and arithmetic should never override merit, but where a section of a state has been consistently excluded from its highest office, a governor’s and a party’s willingness to let that arithmetic assert itself, even against its own (governor’s) wishes, is not the worst instinct a democracy can display. It is called equity and fairness.The contest between Mustapha and AbdulRazaq should not be reduced to a quarrel between former allies. Mustapha has every democratic right to leave the APC, join the PDP, and contest the election. AbdulRazaq has an equally legitimate right to defend his record and seek a new mandate, this time in the Senate. The real issue is whether Kwara’s politics will remain a marketplace where loyalty is exchanged for anticipated reward, or whether office will increasingly be judged by what it delivers.Cain’s question to God, after the blood was already spilled, was whether he was his brother’s keeper. Kwara’s politicians might usefully ask an earlier, less guilty version of that question now, before any blood (God forbid) is spilled at the ballot: whether the coalition they are guarding is one they still believe in, or simply one they expect to be repaid by. Kwarans, watching both brothers argue over the inheritance, are not a footnote to that argument. Kwarans are the reason the field was worth tilling in the first place.The conversation does not end here. You can continue it with me on X via @folorunso_adisa, LinkedIn: Folorunso Fatai Adisa, or on Facebook at Folorunso Fatai Adisa. I became interested in the matter after watching a TVC interview granted by the Commissioner for Education, Dr Lawal Olohungbebe, and the heated exchanges that followed across Kwara’s social-media communities. What should have been a policy argument quickly descended into personal abuse. That is troubling, because political disagreement does not require abandoning political ethics. How citizens debate public affairs eventually becomes the political culture they create.The recurring grievance advanced by some political actors is that Gov. AbdulRazaq has not sufficiently “carried them along.” The phrase deserves interrogation. Should the government be measured by how many politicians receive appointments and contracts, or by whether public resources become public value? There is nothing wrong with seeking inclusion; politics requires coalition-building. But there is a point at which inclusion curdles into entitlement, and entitlement becomes a pretext for rebellion. A government should not become a patronage system in which every supporter expects compensation in the form of office and/or a ticket.Mallam AbdulRazaq’s willingness to place professionals and younger appointees in positions of responsibility complicates the argument that competence has been sacrificed simply because established actors did not receive the access they wanted. This does not place the administration beyond criticism, nor should representation be mistaken for performance. But it is a genuine feature of how the government has staffed itself, and it deserves to be weighed rather than waved away.There is also an irony worth sitting with. The Otoge movement that swept away Kwara’s old political order in 2019 was presented as a revolt against a system many felt had grown entrenched and unresponsive. Mallam Saliu Mustapha himself played a significant role in that realignment after being disqualified from the APC governorship contest, subsequently throwing his support, and reportedly his campaign office, behind Mallam AbdulRazaq’s candidacy. That history makes today’s confrontation more consequential, because it raises a question larger than either man: was Otoge fundamentally about changing the political order, or was it also, for some participants, a vehicle through which individual fortunes were expected to improve? That question should not be answered cynically; political movements are usually coalitions of ideals, grievances and ambitions at once. But when the argument for change becomes an argument for personal reward, the movement risks reproducing the very culture it claimed to oppose. A revolution that changes who occupies the room without changing the habits of those who occupy it has achieved succession, not transformation.And those claims that particular individuals signed undertakings concerning how many terms they would serve should be treated with the same caution: distinguished from what can be independently established through documentary evidence, and reported no further than the evidence itself allows. What can reasonably be examined is the broader principle. Should political loyalty be understood as a contract for future personal reward, or as a temporary alliance built around a shared public objective? The answer says much about the maturity of our democracy.Related NewsThe inevitability of an opposition coalitionFubara signs N1.84tn budget, thanks Wike, lawmakersCampaign billboard removal sparks Kwara PDP, agency rowPerformance gives us a firmer ground for judgment than grievance does. When Gov. AbdulRazaq took office in 2019, Kwara’s Universal Basic Education Board had been effectively locked out of federal support: the state had been blacklisted from accessing UBEC matching grants since 2013, after allegations that an earlier tranche meant for school infrastructure had been diverted instead. By his own account (The Comm. for Education, Hon. Olohungbebe), the administration inherited a N450 million counterpart-funding backlog. It cleared it, a deliberate, gradual repayment that eventually reopened the state’s access to federal intervention funds it had been shut out of for six years. The scale of what followed is not disputable in the way the earlier controversy remains: the government has since recruited over eight thousand SUBEB staff, more than seven thousand of them classroom teachers, offset billions of naira in inherited salary arrears owed to teachers and local government workers, and renovated in excess of six hundred public schools across all sixteen local government areas, alongside new digital literacy centres and a structured literacy programme, KwaraLEARN, built around tablets and continuous teacher coaching. The federal House of Representatives later commended the state’s handling of UBEC funds as a model departure from the diversion that had triggered the earlier blacklist. None of this retroactively settles who was responsible for the 2013 shortfall, and this essayist has no business adjudicating that contested history in a paragraph. What can be stated plainly is what came after: a sustained run of results. Kwara’s public school debate team has now been Nigeria’s reigning national champion since 2021, reaching the World School Debate Championship quarter-finals in Singapore in 2024 before going further still, in December 2025, winning the International Junior Secondary School Debate Championship outright in Kuala Lumpur, defeating Cambodia in the final among sixteen competing countries, and then adding the Nigerian Presidential School Debate in Lagos for good measure. AbdulRazaq has rewarded each cohort of winners in turn, including two million naira apiece for the students behind the Malaysia and Lagos double, with their tutors similarly recognised. A politician may dislike the governor and still concede that a debate trophy, won four years running by children from public schools that were once blacklisted out of federal support entirely, is not an accident of luck.It was therefore revealing to hear “carrying us along” repeatedly invoked in that interview’s aftermath. There is a legitimate case for consultation, but a citizen should not need to belong to a political network to benefit from a functioning government. Roads, schools, water and security do not belong to godfathers. They belong to the people, and a democracy matures precisely to the extent that its citizens learn to separate evidence from allegiance.The question of succession within Kwara’s political geography carries its own irony worth stating honestly. Governor AbdulRazaq had publicly endorsed Abdulfatai Yahya Seriki as his preferred successor days before the APC primary. The party’s base did not follow him; Speaker Yakubu Danladi-Salihu instead won convincingly, polling 94,990 votes to Seriki’s 41,700, amid youth protests against the governor’s preferred candidate. That a sitting governor’s own choice was overruled by his party’s delegates, and that he accepted the outcome rather than contesting it, says something creditable about the limits he has been willing to observe. Kwara North has never produced a governor since 1999, while Kwara Central and Kwara South have shared the office between them. Zoning is not a constitutional entitlement, and arithmetic should never override merit, but where a section of a state has been consistently excluded from its highest office, a governor’s and a party’s willingness to let that arithmetic assert itself, even against its own (governor’s) wishes, is not the worst instinct a democracy can display. It is called equity and fairness.The contest between Mustapha and AbdulRazaq should not be reduced to a quarrel between former allies. Mustapha has every democratic right to leave the APC, join the PDP, and contest the election. AbdulRazaq has an equally legitimate right to defend his record and seek a new mandate, this time in the Senate. The real issue is whether Kwara’s politics will remain a marketplace where loyalty is exchanged for anticipated reward, or whether office will increasingly be judged by what it delivers.Cain’s question to God, after the blood was already spilled, was whether he was his brother’s keeper. Kwara’s politicians might usefully ask an earlier, less guilty version of that question now, before any blood (God forbid) is spilled at the ballot: whether the coalition they are guarding is one they still believe in, or simply one they expect to be repaid by. Kwarans, watching both brothers argue over the inheritance, are not a footnote to that argument. Kwarans are the reason the field was worth tilling in the first place.The conversation does not end here. You can continue it with me on X via @folorunso_adisa, LinkedIn: Folorunso Fatai Adisa, or on Facebook at Folorunso Fatai Adisa. The recurring grievance advanced by some political actors is that Gov. AbdulRazaq has not sufficiently “carried them along.” The phrase deserves interrogation. Should the government be measured by how many politicians receive appointments and contracts, or by whether public resources become public value? There is nothing wrong with seeking inclusion; politics requires coalition-building. But there is a point at which inclusion curdles into entitlement, and entitlement becomes a pretext for rebellion. A government should not become a patronage system in which every supporter expects compensation in the form of office and/or a ticket.Mallam AbdulRazaq’s willingness to place professionals and younger appointees in positions of responsibility complicates the argument that competence has been sacrificed simply because established actors did not receive the access they wanted. This does not place the administration beyond criticism, nor should representation be mistaken for performance. But it is a genuine feature of how the government has staffed itself, and it deserves to be weighed rather than waved away.There is also an irony worth sitting with. The Otoge movement that swept away Kwara’s old political order in 2019 was presented as a revolt against a system many felt had grown entrenched and unresponsive. Mallam Saliu Mustapha himself played a significant role in that realignment after being disqualified from the APC governorship contest, subsequently throwing his support, and reportedly his campaign office, behind Mallam AbdulRazaq’s candidacy. That history makes today’s confrontation more consequential, because it raises a question larger than either man: was Otoge fundamentally about changing the political order, or was it also, for some participants, a vehicle through which individual fortunes were expected to improve? That question should not be answered cynically; political movements are usually coalitions of ideals, grievances and ambitions at once. But when the argument for change becomes an argument for personal reward, the movement risks reproducing the very culture it claimed to oppose. A revolution that changes who occupies the room without changing the habits of those who occupy it has achieved succession, not transformation.And those claims that particular individuals signed undertakings concerning how many terms they would serve should be treated with the same caution: distinguished from what can be independently established through documentary evidence, and reported no further than the evidence itself allows. What can reasonably be examined is the broader principle. Should political loyalty be understood as a contract for future personal reward, or as a temporary alliance built around a shared public objective? The answer says much about the maturity of our democracy.Related NewsThe inevitability of an opposition coalitionFubara signs N1.84tn budget, thanks Wike, lawmakersCampaign billboard removal sparks Kwara PDP, agency rowPerformance gives us a firmer ground for judgment than grievance does. When Gov. AbdulRazaq took office in 2019, Kwara’s Universal Basic Education Board had been effectively locked out of federal support: the state had been blacklisted from accessing UBEC matching grants since 2013, after allegations that an earlier tranche meant for school infrastructure had been diverted instead. By his own account (The Comm. for Education, Hon. Olohungbebe), the administration inherited a N450 million counterpart-funding backlog. It cleared it, a deliberate, gradual repayment that eventually reopened the state’s access to federal intervention funds it had been shut out of for six years. The scale of what followed is not disputable in the way the earlier controversy remains: the government has since recruited over eight thousand SUBEB staff, more than seven thousand of them classroom teachers, offset billions of naira in inherited salary arrears owed to teachers and local government workers, and renovated in excess of six hundred public schools across all sixteen local government areas, alongside new digital literacy centres and a structured literacy programme, KwaraLEARN, built around tablets and continuous teacher coaching. The federal House of Representatives later commended the state’s handling of UBEC funds as a model departure from the diversion that had triggered the earlier blacklist. None of this retroactively settles who was responsible for the 2013 shortfall, and this essayist has no business adjudicating that contested history in a paragraph. What can be stated plainly is what came after: a sustained run of results. Kwara’s public school debate team has now been Nigeria’s reigning national champion since 2021, reaching the World School Debate Championship quarter-finals in Singapore in 2024 before going further still, in December 2025, winning the International Junior Secondary School Debate Championship outright in Kuala Lumpur, defeating Cambodia in the final among sixteen competing countries, and then adding the Nigerian Presidential School Debate in Lagos for good measure. AbdulRazaq has rewarded each cohort of winners in turn, including two million naira apiece for the students behind the Malaysia and Lagos double, with their tutors similarly recognised. A politician may dislike the governor and still concede that a debate trophy, won four years running by children from public schools that were once blacklisted out of federal support entirely, is not an accident of luck.It was therefore revealing to hear “carrying us along” repeatedly invoked in that interview’s aftermath. There is a legitimate case for consultation, but a citizen should not need to belong to a political network to benefit from a functioning government. Roads, schools, water and security do not belong to godfathers. They belong to the people, and a democracy matures precisely to the extent that its citizens learn to separate evidence from allegiance.The question of succession within Kwara’s political geography carries its own irony worth stating honestly. Governor AbdulRazaq had publicly endorsed Abdulfatai Yahya Seriki as his preferred successor days before the APC primary. The party’s base did not follow him; Speaker Yakubu Danladi-Salihu instead won convincingly, polling 94,990 votes to Seriki’s 41,700, amid youth protests against the governor’s preferred candidate. That a sitting governor’s own choice was overruled by his party’s delegates, and that he accepted the outcome rather than contesting it, says something creditable about the limits he has been willing to observe. Kwara North has never produced a governor since 1999, while Kwara Central and Kwara South have shared the office between them. Zoning is not a constitutional entitlement, and arithmetic should never override merit, but where a section of a state has been consistently excluded from its highest office, a governor’s and a party’s willingness to let that arithmetic assert itself, even against its own (governor’s) wishes, is not the worst instinct a democracy can display. It is called equity and fairness.The contest between Mustapha and AbdulRazaq should not be reduced to a quarrel between former allies. Mustapha has every democratic right to leave the APC, join the PDP, and contest the election. AbdulRazaq has an equally legitimate right to defend his record and seek a new mandate, this time in the Senate. The real issue is whether Kwara’s politics will remain a marketplace where loyalty is exchanged for anticipated reward, or whether office will increasingly be judged by what it delivers.Cain’s question to God, after the blood was already spilled, was whether he was his brother’s keeper. Kwara’s politicians might usefully ask an earlier, less guilty version of that question now, before any blood (God forbid) is spilled at the ballot: whether the coalition they are guarding is one they still believe in, or simply one they expect to be repaid by. Kwarans, watching both brothers argue over the inheritance, are not a footnote to that argument. Kwarans are the reason the field was worth tilling in the first place.The conversation does not end here. You can continue it with me on X via @folorunso_adisa, LinkedIn: Folorunso Fatai Adisa, or on Facebook at Folorunso Fatai Adisa. Mallam AbdulRazaq’s willingness to place professionals and younger appointees in positions of responsibility complicates the argument that competence has been sacrificed simply because established actors did not receive the access they wanted. This does not place the administration beyond criticism, nor should representation be mistaken for performance. But it is a genuine feature of how the government has staffed itself, and it deserves to be weighed rather than waved away.There is also an irony worth sitting with. The Otoge movement that swept away Kwara’s old political order in 2019 was presented as a revolt against a system many felt had grown entrenched and unresponsive. Mallam Saliu Mustapha himself played a significant role in that realignment after being disqualified from the APC governorship contest, subsequently throwing his support, and reportedly his campaign office, behind Mallam AbdulRazaq’s candidacy. That history makes today’s confrontation more consequential, because it raises a question larger than either man: was Otoge fundamentally about changing the political order, or was it also, for some participants, a vehicle through which individual fortunes were expected to improve? That question should not be answered cynically; political movements are usually coalitions of ideals, grievances and ambitions at once. But when the argument for change becomes an argument for personal reward, the movement risks reproducing the very culture it claimed to oppose. A revolution that changes who occupies the room without changing the habits of those who occupy it has achieved succession, not transformation.And those claims that particular individuals signed undertakings concerning how many terms they would serve should be treated with the same caution: distinguished from what can be independently established through documentary evidence, and reported no further than the evidence itself allows. What can reasonably be examined is the broader principle. Should political loyalty be understood as a contract for future personal reward, or as a temporary alliance built around a shared public objective? The answer says much about the maturity of our democracy.Related NewsThe inevitability of an opposition coalitionFubara signs N1.84tn budget, thanks Wike, lawmakersCampaign billboard removal sparks Kwara PDP, agency rowPerformance gives us a firmer ground for judgment than grievance does. When Gov. AbdulRazaq took office in 2019, Kwara’s Universal Basic Education Board had been effectively locked out of federal support: the state had been blacklisted from accessing UBEC matching grants since 2013, after allegations that an earlier tranche meant for school infrastructure had been diverted instead. By his own account (The Comm. for Education, Hon. Olohungbebe), the administration inherited a N450 million counterpart-funding backlog. It cleared it, a deliberate, gradual repayment that eventually reopened the state’s access to federal intervention funds it had been shut out of for six years. The scale of what followed is not disputable in the way the earlier controversy remains: the government has since recruited over eight thousand SUBEB staff, more than seven thousand of them classroom teachers, offset billions of naira in inherited salary arrears owed to teachers and local government workers, and renovated in excess of six hundred public schools across all sixteen local government areas, alongside new digital literacy centres and a structured literacy programme, KwaraLEARN, built around tablets and continuous teacher coaching. The federal House of Representatives later commended the state’s handling of UBEC funds as a model departure from the diversion that had triggered the earlier blacklist. None of this retroactively settles who was responsible for the 2013 shortfall, and this essayist has no business adjudicating that contested history in a paragraph. What can be stated plainly is what came after: a sustained run of results. Kwara’s public school debate team has now been Nigeria’s reigning national champion since 2021, reaching the World School Debate Championship quarter-finals in Singapore in 2024 before going further still, in December 2025, winning the International Junior Secondary School Debate Championship outright in Kuala Lumpur, defeating Cambodia in the final among sixteen competing countries, and then adding the Nigerian Presidential School Debate in Lagos for good measure. AbdulRazaq has rewarded each cohort of winners in turn, including two million naira apiece for the students behind the Malaysia and Lagos double, with their tutors similarly recognised. A politician may dislike the governor and still concede that a debate trophy, won four years running by children from public schools that were once blacklisted out of federal support entirely, is not an accident of luck.It was therefore revealing to hear “carrying us along” repeatedly invoked in that interview’s aftermath. There is a legitimate case for consultation, but a citizen should not need to belong to a political network to benefit from a functioning government. Roads, schools, water and security do not belong to godfathers. They belong to the people, and a democracy matures precisely to the extent that its citizens learn to separate evidence from allegiance.The question of succession within Kwara’s political geography carries its own irony worth stating honestly. Governor AbdulRazaq had publicly endorsed Abdulfatai Yahya Seriki as his preferred successor days before the APC primary. The party’s base did not follow him; Speaker Yakubu Danladi-Salihu instead won convincingly, polling 94,990 votes to Seriki’s 41,700, amid youth protests against the governor’s preferred candidate. That a sitting governor’s own choice was overruled by his party’s delegates, and that he accepted the outcome rather than contesting it, says something creditable about the limits he has been willing to observe. Kwara North has never produced a governor since 1999, while Kwara Central and Kwara South have shared the office between them. Zoning is not a constitutional entitlement, and arithmetic should never override merit, but where a section of a state has been consistently excluded from its highest office, a governor’s and a party’s willingness to let that arithmetic assert itself, even against its own (governor’s) wishes, is not the worst instinct a democracy can display. It is called equity and fairness.The contest between Mustapha and AbdulRazaq should not be reduced to a quarrel between former allies. Mustapha has every democratic right to leave the APC, join the PDP, and contest the election. AbdulRazaq has an equally legitimate right to defend his record and seek a new mandate, this time in the Senate. The real issue is whether Kwara’s politics will remain a marketplace where loyalty is exchanged for anticipated reward, or whether office will increasingly be judged by what it delivers.Cain’s question to God, after the blood was already spilled, was whether he was his brother’s keeper. Kwara’s politicians might usefully ask an earlier, less guilty version of that question now, before any blood (God forbid) is spilled at the ballot: whether the coalition they are guarding is one they still believe in, or simply one they expect to be repaid by. Kwarans, watching both brothers argue over the inheritance, are not a footnote to that argument. Kwarans are the reason the field was worth tilling in the first place.The conversation does not end here. You can continue it with me on X via @folorunso_adisa, LinkedIn: Folorunso Fatai Adisa, or on Facebook at Folorunso Fatai Adisa. There is also an irony worth sitting with. The Otoge movement that swept away Kwara’s old political order in 2019 was presented as a revolt against a system many felt had grown entrenched and unresponsive. Mallam Saliu Mustapha himself played a significant role in that realignment after being disqualified from the APC governorship contest, subsequently throwing his support, and reportedly his campaign office, behind Mallam AbdulRazaq’s candidacy. That history makes today’s confrontation more consequential, because it raises a question larger than either man: was Otoge fundamentally about changing the political order, or was it also, for some participants, a vehicle through which individual fortunes were expected to improve? That question should not be answered cynically; political movements are usually coalitions of ideals, grievances and ambitions at once. But when the argument for change becomes an argument for personal reward, the movement risks reproducing the very culture it claimed to oppose. A revolution that changes who occupies the room without changing the habits of those who occupy it has achieved succession, not transformation.And those claims that particular individuals signed undertakings concerning how many terms they would serve should be treated with the same caution: distinguished from what can be independently established through documentary evidence, and reported no further than the evidence itself allows. What can reasonably be examined is the broader principle. Should political loyalty be understood as a contract for future personal reward, or as a temporary alliance built around a shared public objective? The answer says much about the maturity of our democracy.Related NewsThe inevitability of an opposition coalitionFubara signs N1.84tn budget, thanks Wike, lawmakersCampaign billboard removal sparks Kwara PDP, agency rowPerformance gives us a firmer ground for judgment than grievance does. When Gov. AbdulRazaq took office in 2019, Kwara’s Universal Basic Education Board had been effectively locked out of federal support: the state had been blacklisted from accessing UBEC matching grants since 2013, after allegations that an earlier tranche meant for school infrastructure had been diverted instead. By his own account (The Comm. for Education, Hon. Olohungbebe), the administration inherited a N450 million counterpart-funding backlog. It cleared it, a deliberate, gradual repayment that eventually reopened the state’s access to federal intervention funds it had been shut out of for six years. The scale of what followed is not disputable in the way the earlier controversy remains: the government has since recruited over eight thousand SUBEB staff, more than seven thousand of them classroom teachers, offset billions of naira in inherited salary arrears owed to teachers and local government workers, and renovated in excess of six hundred public schools across all sixteen local government areas, alongside new digital literacy centres and a structured literacy programme, KwaraLEARN, built around tablets and continuous teacher coaching. The federal House of Representatives later commended the state’s handling of UBEC funds as a model departure from the diversion that had triggered the earlier blacklist. None of this retroactively settles who was responsible for the 2013 shortfall, and this essayist has no business adjudicating that contested history in a paragraph. What can be stated plainly is what came after: a sustained run of results. Kwara’s public school debate team has now been Nigeria’s reigning national champion since 2021, reaching the World School Debate Championship quarter-finals in Singapore in 2024 before going further still, in December 2025, winning the International Junior Secondary School Debate Championship outright in Kuala Lumpur, defeating Cambodia in the final among sixteen competing countries, and then adding the Nigerian Presidential School Debate in Lagos for good measure. AbdulRazaq has rewarded each cohort of winners in turn, including two million naira apiece for the students behind the Malaysia and Lagos double, with their tutors similarly recognised. A politician may dislike the governor and still concede that a debate trophy, won four years running by children from public schools that were once blacklisted out of federal support entirely, is not an accident of luck.It was therefore revealing to hear “carrying us along” repeatedly invoked in that interview’s aftermath. There is a legitimate case for consultation, but a citizen should not need to belong to a political network to benefit from a functioning government. Roads, schools, water and security do not belong to godfathers. They belong to the people, and a democracy matures precisely to the extent that its citizens learn to separate evidence from allegiance.The question of succession within Kwara’s political geography carries its own irony worth stating honestly. Governor AbdulRazaq had publicly endorsed Abdulfatai Yahya Seriki as his preferred successor days before the APC primary. The party’s base did not follow him; Speaker Yakubu Danladi-Salihu instead won convincingly, polling 94,990 votes to Seriki’s 41,700, amid youth protests against the governor’s preferred candidate. That a sitting governor’s own choice was overruled by his party’s delegates, and that he accepted the outcome rather than contesting it, says something creditable about the limits he has been willing to observe. Kwara North has never produced a governor since 1999, while Kwara Central and Kwara South have shared the office between them. Zoning is not a constitutional entitlement, and arithmetic should never override merit, but where a section of a state has been consistently excluded from its highest office, a governor’s and a party’s willingness to let that arithmetic assert itself, even against its own (governor’s) wishes, is not the worst instinct a democracy can display. It is called equity and fairness.The contest between Mustapha and AbdulRazaq should not be reduced to a quarrel between former allies. Mustapha has every democratic right to leave the APC, join the PDP, and contest the election. AbdulRazaq has an equally legitimate right to defend his record and seek a new mandate, this time in the Senate. The real issue is whether Kwara’s politics will remain a marketplace where loyalty is exchanged for anticipated reward, or whether office will increasingly be judged by what it delivers.Cain’s question to God, after the blood was already spilled, was whether he was his brother’s keeper. Kwara’s politicians might usefully ask an earlier, less guilty version of that question now, before any blood (God forbid) is spilled at the ballot: whether the coalition they are guarding is one they still believe in, or simply one they expect to be repaid by. Kwarans, watching both brothers argue over the inheritance, are not a footnote to that argument. Kwarans are the reason the field was worth tilling in the first place.The conversation does not end here. You can continue it with me on X via @folorunso_adisa, LinkedIn: Folorunso Fatai Adisa, or on Facebook at Folorunso Fatai Adisa. And those claims that particular individuals signed undertakings concerning how many terms they would serve should be treated with the same caution: distinguished from what can be independently established through documentary evidence, and reported no further than the evidence itself allows. What can reasonably be examined is the broader principle. Should political loyalty be understood as a contract for future personal reward, or as a temporary alliance built around a shared public objective? The answer says much about the maturity of our democracy.Related NewsThe inevitability of an opposition coalitionFubara signs N1.84tn budget, thanks Wike, lawmakersCampaign billboard removal sparks Kwara PDP, agency rowPerformance gives us a firmer ground for judgment than grievance does. When Gov. AbdulRazaq took office in 2019, Kwara’s Universal Basic Education Board had been effectively locked out of federal support: the state had been blacklisted from accessing UBEC matching grants since 2013, after allegations that an earlier tranche meant for school infrastructure had been diverted instead. By his own account (The Comm. for Education, Hon. Olohungbebe), the administration inherited a N450 million counterpart-funding backlog. It cleared it, a deliberate, gradual repayment that eventually reopened the state’s access to federal intervention funds it had been shut out of for six years. The scale of what followed is not disputable in the way the earlier controversy remains: the government has since recruited over eight thousand SUBEB staff, more than seven thousand of them classroom teachers, offset billions of naira in inherited salary arrears owed to teachers and local government workers, and renovated in excess of six hundred public schools across all sixteen local government areas, alongside new digital literacy centres and a structured literacy programme, KwaraLEARN, built around tablets and continuous teacher coaching. The federal House of Representatives later commended the state’s handling of UBEC funds as a model departure from the diversion that had triggered the earlier blacklist. None of this retroactively settles who was responsible for the 2013 shortfall, and this essayist has no business adjudicating that contested history in a paragraph. What can be stated plainly is what came after: a sustained run of results. Kwara’s public school debate team has now been Nigeria’s reigning national champion since 2021, reaching the World School Debate Championship quarter-finals in Singapore in 2024 before going further still, in December 2025, winning the International Junior Secondary School Debate Championship outright in Kuala Lumpur, defeating Cambodia in the final among sixteen competing countries, and then adding the Nigerian Presidential School Debate in Lagos for good measure. AbdulRazaq has rewarded each cohort of winners in turn, including two million naira apiece for the students behind the Malaysia and Lagos double, with their tutors similarly recognised. A politician may dislike the governor and still concede that a debate trophy, won four years running by children from public schools that were once blacklisted out of federal support entirely, is not an accident of luck.It was therefore revealing to hear “carrying us along” repeatedly invoked in that interview’s aftermath. There is a legitimate case for consultation, but a citizen should not need to belong to a political network to benefit from a functioning government. Roads, schools, water and security do not belong to godfathers. They belong to the people, and a democracy matures precisely to the extent that its citizens learn to separate evidence from allegiance.The question of succession within Kwara’s political geography carries its own irony worth stating honestly. Governor AbdulRazaq had publicly endorsed Abdulfatai Yahya Seriki as his preferred successor days before the APC primary. The party’s base did not follow him; Speaker Yakubu Danladi-Salihu instead won convincingly, polling 94,990 votes to Seriki’s 41,700, amid youth protests against the governor’s preferred candidate. That a sitting governor’s own choice was overruled by his party’s delegates, and that he accepted the outcome rather than contesting it, says something creditable about the limits he has been willing to observe. Kwara North has never produced a governor since 1999, while Kwara Central and Kwara South have shared the office between them. Zoning is not a constitutional entitlement, and arithmetic should never override merit, but where a section of a state has been consistently excluded from its highest office, a governor’s and a party’s willingness to let that arithmetic assert itself, even against its own (governor’s) wishes, is not the worst instinct a democracy can display. It is called equity and fairness.The contest between Mustapha and AbdulRazaq should not be reduced to a quarrel between former allies. Mustapha has every democratic right to leave the APC, join the PDP, and contest the election. AbdulRazaq has an equally legitimate right to defend his record and seek a new mandate, this time in the Senate. The real issue is whether Kwara’s politics will remain a marketplace where loyalty is exchanged for anticipated reward, or whether office will increasingly be judged by what it delivers.Cain’s question to God, after the blood was already spilled, was whether he was his brother’s keeper. Kwara’s politicians might usefully ask an earlier, less guilty version of that question now, before any blood (God forbid) is spilled at the ballot: whether the coalition they are guarding is one they still believe in, or simply one they expect to be repaid by. Kwarans, watching both brothers argue over the inheritance, are not a footnote to that argument. Kwarans are the reason the field was worth tilling in the first place.The conversation does not end here. You can continue it with me on X via @folorunso_adisa, LinkedIn: Folorunso Fatai Adisa, or on Facebook at Folorunso Fatai Adisa. Performance gives us a firmer ground for judgment than grievance does. When Gov. AbdulRazaq took office in 2019, Kwara’s Universal Basic Education Board had been effectively locked out of federal support: the state had been blacklisted from accessing UBEC matching grants since 2013, after allegations that an earlier tranche meant for school infrastructure had been diverted instead. By his own account (The Comm. for Education, Hon. Olohungbebe), the administration inherited a N450 million counterpart-funding backlog. It cleared it, a deliberate, gradual repayment that eventually reopened the state’s access to federal intervention funds it had been shut out of for six years. The scale of what followed is not disputable in the way the earlier controversy remains: the government has since recruited over eight thousand SUBEB staff, more than seven thousand of them classroom teachers, offset billions of naira in inherited salary arrears owed to teachers and local government workers, and renovated in excess of six hundred public schools across all sixteen local government areas, alongside new digital literacy centres and a structured literacy programme, KwaraLEARN, built around tablets and continuous teacher coaching. The federal House of Representatives later commended the state’s handling of UBEC funds as a model departure from the diversion that had triggered the earlier blacklist. None of this retroactively settles who was responsible for the 2013 shortfall, and this essayist has no business adjudicating that contested history in a paragraph. What can be stated plainly is what came after: a sustained run of results. Kwara’s public school debate team has now been Nigeria’s reigning national champion since 2021, reaching the World School Debate Championship quarter-finals in Singapore in 2024 before going further still, in December 2025, winning the International Junior Secondary School Debate Championship outright in Kuala Lumpur, defeating Cambodia in the final among sixteen competing countries, and then adding the Nigerian Presidential School Debate in Lagos for good measure. AbdulRazaq has rewarded each cohort of winners in turn, including two million naira apiece for the students behind the Malaysia and Lagos double, with their tutors similarly recognised. A politician may dislike the governor and still concede that a debate trophy, won four years running by children from public schools that were once blacklisted out of federal support entirely, is not an accident of luck.It was therefore revealing to hear “carrying us along” repeatedly invoked in that interview’s aftermath. There is a legitimate case for consultation, but a citizen should not need to belong to a political network to benefit from a functioning government. Roads, schools, water and security do not belong to godfathers. They belong to the people, and a democracy matures precisely to the extent that its citizens learn to separate evidence from allegiance.The question of succession within Kwara’s political geography carries its own irony worth stating honestly. Governor AbdulRazaq had publicly endorsed Abdulfatai Yahya Seriki as his preferred successor days before the APC primary. The party’s base did not follow him; Speaker Yakubu Danladi-Salihu instead won convincingly, polling 94,990 votes to Seriki’s 41,700, amid youth protests against the governor’s preferred candidate. That a sitting governor’s own choice was overruled by his party’s delegates, and that he accepted the outcome rather than contesting it, says something creditable about the limits he has been willing to observe. Kwara North has never produced a governor since 1999, while Kwara Central and Kwara South have shared the office between them. Zoning is not a constitutional entitlement, and arithmetic should never override merit, but where a section of a state has been consistently excluded from its highest office, a governor’s and a party’s willingness to let that arithmetic assert itself, even against its own (governor’s) wishes, is not the worst instinct a democracy can display. It is called equity and fairness.The contest between Mustapha and AbdulRazaq should not be reduced to a quarrel between former allies. Mustapha has every democratic right to leave the APC, join the PDP, and contest the election. AbdulRazaq has an equally legitimate right to defend his record and seek a new mandate, this time in the Senate. The real issue is whether Kwara’s politics will remain a marketplace where loyalty is exchanged for anticipated reward, or whether office will increasingly be judged by what it delivers.Cain’s question to God, after the blood was already spilled, was whether he was his brother’s keeper. Kwara’s politicians might usefully ask an earlier, less guilty version of that question now, before any blood (God forbid) is spilled at the ballot: whether the coalition they are guarding is one they still believe in, or simply one they expect to be repaid by. Kwarans, watching both brothers argue over the inheritance, are not a footnote to that argument. Kwarans are the reason the field was worth tilling in the first place.The conversation does not end here. You can continue it with me on X via @folorunso_adisa, LinkedIn: Folorunso Fatai Adisa, or on Facebook at Folorunso Fatai Adisa. It was therefore revealing to hear “carrying us along” repeatedly invoked in that interview’s aftermath. There is a legitimate case for consultation, but a citizen should not need to belong to a political network to benefit from a functioning government. Roads, schools, water and security do not belong to godfathers. They belong to the people, and a democracy matures precisely to the extent that its citizens learn to separate evidence from allegiance.The question of succession within Kwara’s political geography carries its own irony worth stating honestly. Governor AbdulRazaq had publicly endorsed Abdulfatai Yahya Seriki as his preferred successor days before the APC primary. The party’s base did not follow him; Speaker Yakubu Danladi-Salihu instead won convincingly, polling 94,990 votes to Seriki’s 41,700, amid youth protests against the governor’s preferred candidate. That a sitting governor’s own choice was overruled by his party’s delegates, and that he accepted the outcome rather than contesting it, says something creditable about the limits he has been willing to observe. Kwara North has never produced a governor since 1999, while Kwara Central and Kwara South have shared the office between them. Zoning is not a constitutional entitlement, and arithmetic should never override merit, but where a section of a state has been consistently excluded from its highest office, a governor’s and a party’s willingness to let that arithmetic assert itself, even against its own (governor’s) wishes, is not the worst instinct a democracy can display. It is called equity and fairness.The contest between Mustapha and AbdulRazaq should not be reduced to a quarrel between former allies. Mustapha has every democratic right to leave the APC, join the PDP, and contest the election. AbdulRazaq has an equally legitimate right to defend his record and seek a new mandate, this time in the Senate. The real issue is whether Kwara’s politics will remain a marketplace where loyalty is exchanged for anticipated reward, or whether office will increasingly be judged by what it delivers.Cain’s question to God, after the blood was already spilled, was whether he was his brother’s keeper. Kwara’s politicians might usefully ask an earlier, less guilty version of that question now, before any blood (God forbid) is spilled at the ballot: whether the coalition they are guarding is one they still believe in, or simply one they expect to be repaid by. Kwarans, watching both brothers argue over the inheritance, are not a footnote to that argument. Kwarans are the reason the field was worth tilling in the first place.The conversation does not end here. You can continue it with me on X via @folorunso_adisa, LinkedIn: Folorunso Fatai Adisa, or on Facebook at Folorunso Fatai Adisa. The question of succession within Kwara’s political geography carries its own irony worth stating honestly. Governor AbdulRazaq had publicly endorsed Abdulfatai Yahya Seriki as his preferred successor days before the APC primary. The party’s base did not follow him; Speaker Yakubu Danladi-Salihu instead won convincingly, polling 94,990 votes to Seriki’s 41,700, amid youth protests against the governor’s preferred candidate. That a sitting governor’s own choice was overruled by his party’s delegates, and that he accepted the outcome rather than contesting it, says something creditable about the limits he has been willing to observe. Kwara North has never produced a governor since 1999, while Kwara Central and Kwara South have shared the office between them. Zoning is not a constitutional entitlement, and arithmetic should never override merit, but where a section of a state has been consistently excluded from its highest office, a governor’s and a party’s willingness to let that arithmetic assert itself, even against its own (governor’s) wishes, is not the worst instinct a democracy can display. It is called equity and fairness.The contest between Mustapha and AbdulRazaq should not be reduced to a quarrel between former allies. Mustapha has every democratic right to leave the APC, join the PDP, and contest the election. AbdulRazaq has an equally legitimate right to defend his record and seek a new mandate, this time in the Senate. The real issue is whether Kwara’s politics will remain a marketplace where loyalty is exchanged for anticipated reward, or whether office will increasingly be judged by what it delivers.Cain’s question to God, after the blood was already spilled, was whether he was his brother’s keeper. Kwara’s politicians might usefully ask an earlier, less guilty version of that question now, before any blood (God forbid) is spilled at the ballot: whether the coalition they are guarding is one they still believe in, or simply one they expect to be repaid by. Kwarans, watching both brothers argue over the inheritance, are not a footnote to that argument. Kwarans are the reason the field was worth tilling in the first place.The conversation does not end here. You can continue it with me on X via @folorunso_adisa, LinkedIn: Folorunso Fatai Adisa, or on Facebook at Folorunso Fatai Adisa. The contest between Mustapha and AbdulRazaq should not be reduced to a quarrel between former allies. Mustapha has every democratic right to leave the APC, join the PDP, and contest the election. AbdulRazaq has an equally legitimate right to defend his record and seek a new mandate, this time in the Senate. The real issue is whether Kwara’s politics will remain a marketplace where loyalty is exchanged for anticipated reward, or whether office will increasingly be judged by what it delivers.Cain’s question to God, after the blood was already spilled, was whether he was his brother’s keeper. Kwara’s politicians might usefully ask an earlier, less guilty version of that question now, before any blood (God forbid) is spilled at the ballot: whether the coalition they are guarding is one they still believe in, or simply one they expect to be repaid by. Kwarans, watching both brothers argue over the inheritance, are not a footnote to that argument. Kwarans are the reason the field was worth tilling in the first place.The conversation does not end here. You can continue it with me on X via @folorunso_adisa, LinkedIn: Folorunso Fatai Adisa, or on Facebook at Folorunso Fatai Adisa. Cain’s question to God, after the blood was already spilled, was whether he was his brother’s keeper. Kwara’s politicians might usefully ask an earlier, less guilty version of that question now, before any blood (God forbid) is spilled at the ballot: whether the coalition they are guarding is one they still believe in, or simply one they expect to be repaid by. Kwarans, watching both brothers argue over the inheritance, are not a footnote to that argument. Kwarans are the reason the field was worth tilling in the first place.The conversation does not end here. You can continue it with me on X via @folorunso_adisa, LinkedIn: Folorunso Fatai Adisa, or on Facebook at Folorunso Fatai Adisa. The conversation does not end here. You can continue it with me on X via @folorunso_adisa, LinkedIn: Folorunso Fatai Adisa, or on Facebook at Folorunso Fatai Adisa.