Barring any last-minute changes, President Bola Tinubu is expected to name the consensus candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the 2027 Lagos State governorship election on Monday, March 30, 2026.
Eko Hotblog understands that the president has been consulting major stakeholders in the party and is finalising his choice for Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s successor.
Sources say the situation is fluid and nothing is final until the announcement is made as consultation continues.
President Tinubu, who was in Lagos earlier this week for the Eid-el-Fitr holiday following his state visit to the United Kingdom (UK) and left the state on Wednesday, met with Lagos APC Governor’s Advisory Council (GAC) members on Monday, March 23.
From all indications and barring any last-minute surprises, the consensus choice for the APC governorship ticket will come from the Epe Division of the state.
That factor leaves some political heavyweights from Epe, including the incumbent Deputy Governor, Obafemi Hamzat; the Minister of Education, Dr Tunji Alausa; Lagos State Commissioner for Environment and Water Resources, Tokunbo Wahab; and former Governor Akinwunmi Ambode, as potential picks.
Beyond the Epe factor, religion is also expected to influence the choice of the APC candidate. Following 12 years of Christian leadership (Ambode for four years and Sanwo-Olu for eight), a Muslim is widely considered the preferred successor, a factor that may count against Ambode.
But the Christian community also believes that another four years of Ambode, who can only stay in office for one more term, would complete 16 years of Christian administration, just like their Muslim counterparts before them (eight years of Tinubu and eight years of Babatunde Raji Fashola).
While party faithful and Lagos residents await President Tinubu’s decision, all the potential contenders are widely regarded as credible, qualified, and possessing the grassroots reach and political strength required to win the 2027 election.
Although they’ve all been linked to the office, none of them has publicly declared any intention to contest for it.
Obafemi Hamzat
Hamzat is the most prominent name in the current reckoning. He holds a doctorate in System Process Engineering from Cranfield University and a degree in Agricultural Engineering from the University of Ibadan. He has worked at Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Oando Plc, where he was Chief Information Officer.
His entry into Lagos governance came through Tinubu. In August 2005, the president appointed him Commissioner for Science and Technology, a position he retained under Governor Babatunde Fashola, who later redeployed him to the more consequential Works and Infrastructure portfolio in 2011. He served in that role until 2015, overseeing some of Lagos’s most visible infrastructure projects during the Fashola years.
Hamzat became deputy governor in 2019 after stepping down from the governorship race to support Sanwo-Olu, and was re-elected in 2023. By 2027, he would have completed eight years as deputy governor, the longest-serving occupant of that office in Lagos history.
His decades of experience, Epe roots, and deep APC connections make him the frontrunner.
Tokunbo Wahab
Wahab is the least nationally prominent of the four contenders but among the most accomplished in terms of governance track record within Lagos.
Born in Epe, he began his education at Army Barracks Primary School, Epe, before proceeding to Army Children High School, Epe.
Wahab holds an LLB from the University of Benin and completed his legal training at the Nigerian Law School. He built a legal career at top firms before founding Wali & Ace Legal Practitioners, and has attended executive programmes at Harvard Kennedy School, Harvard Business School, and Wharton.
He served as Special Adviser to the Governor on Education from August 2019 to May 2023, helping to shape Lagos’s tertiary education policy during Sanwo-Olu’s first term. He was appointed Commissioner for Environment and Water Resources on September 13, 2023.
In that role, he has become one of Lagos’s most visible commissioners, leading enforcement operations, prosecuting ecological offenders, and driving the state’s transition towards a circular waste economy, including partnerships to convert Lagos’s 13,000 tonnes of daily waste into compost, recyclables, and energy.
His enforcement style has made him a polarising but effective urban administrator. His Epe indigene status, combined with a profile spanning legal practice, education reform, and environmental governance, gives him a distinct edge in the succession conversation.
Tunji Alausa
Before returning to Nigeria in 2023, Dr Alausa had already built a record of achievement in the United States (US) that few Nigerian ministers can match. His Kidney Care Centre, founded in 2004, grew into a multi-state specialist network spanning five American states. He became a national leader in the Value-Based Care initiative, a healthcare model focused on maximum patient outcomes at minimum cost.
That reformist instinct followed him into government. As Minister of State for Health from August 2023, he focused on restructuring Nigeria’s health delivery architecture and advancing the case for universal health coverage.
When he was elevated to the full portfolio of Minister of Education in October 2024, he brought the same diagnostic approach to one of the most troubled ministries in the federation. One of his first major moves was a dramatic curriculum pruning for primary and second schools: for the 2025/26 academic year, primary school subjects were reduced from up to 17 to just 10 or 12, with a new emphasis on practical skills including solar installation and digital literacy.
The pace did not slow. Within his first year at the ministry, 28,000 new teachers were employed, 250,000 Nigerian youths were enrolled in technical and vocational programmes, and ₦700 billion was invested in upgrading hostels, laboratories, and workshops in tertiary institutions.
He also ended a 16-year impasse with the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) in December 2025, resolving the dispute with a 40% salary increase for university staff, a settlement that had eluded his predecessors across multiple administrations.
He also signed an MoU with the Rural Electrification Agency to deliver off-grid power to Nigerian universities, rehabilitated 18 medical schools across the country’s six geopolitical zones, and launched Nigeria’s first-ever National Anti-Bullying Policy.
For a technocrat who spent decades building systems in America before returning home to serve, Alausa’s ministerial record reads less like a politician’s CV and more like a project manager’s delivery log, a quality some believe is precisely what Lagos governance needs next.
Akinwunmi Ambode
Of the four names in the frame, Ambode is the only one who has actually governed Lagos and the record he left behind remains one of the most talked about in the state’s recent history.
In four years, his administration undertook 342 road projects covering over 365 kilometres of carriageway. The Oshodi Transport Interchange, his signature project, was built with 18 lifts across three terminals, equipped with CCTV cameras and real-time bus tracking, the first of its kind in Nigeria.
He also expanded Airport Road into a ten-lane highway, established a N25 billion Employment Trust Fund, hired 1,300 teachers to revive primary education, and created the Lagos Neighbourhood Safety Corps through legislation.
Beyond hard infrastructure, Ambode invested in the state’s cultural life, commissioning performance theatres in Igando, Epe, Badagry, and Oregun, and launching the “Light Up Lagos” streetlight campaign that extended economic activity into the night. Epe, his hometown and the zone now at the centre of the succession conversation, was among the most visibly transformed areas of his tenure.
His exit after one term, following a bitter falling-out with Tinubu over the 2018 primary, has never been fully forgotten. But his rehabilitation has been visible: at the October 2025 Lagos APC Stakeholders Forum, he sat alongside Sanwo-Olu, Fashola, and other party leaders in endorsing Tinubu’s second-term bid. He also attended Monday’s GAC meeting with the president.
What has persisted most, however, is his popularity among ordinary Lagosians. For many voters, the Ambode years represent a high-water mark of delivery: roads built, lights on, buses running.
0 Comments