The former Governor of Ekiti State, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, has raised the alarm over the current political trajectory of the All Progressives Congress (APC), warning that the ruling party has completely derailed from its founding principles and could face a major internal implosion if its core values are not restored.

Fayemi made the assertions during a candid interview on the podcast State Affairs, hosted by media personality Edmund Obilo.

The former governor expressed deep disappointment with the structural operations of the APC, explicitly stating that the party has lost its bearings and completely abandoned the vision laid out by its founding fathers.

Fayemi recalled that the party was originally built on a progressive foundation intended to encourage open debate, intellectual engagement, and robust internal democracy.

He lamented that the contemporary APC severely lacks these intellectual attributes. According to him, the internal spaces where ideological debates and healthy policy disagreements used to occur have completely dried up, leaving the political platform devoid of the progressive ideas that initially propelled it to national power.

A major point of concern raised by Fayemi was the party’s current obsession with adopting consensus arrangements to select political flagbearers for upcoming elections. The former minister of solid minerals development noted that while consensus is not a bad political tool on its own, it has been heavily weaponized within the APC to completely bypass transparent electoral processes.

He criticized a growing trend where top aspirants and party leaders frequently run to Aso Rock to beg the presidency for consensus alignments rather than testing their popularity on the field. Fayemi strongly warned that using top-down pressure to suppress internal competition is a recipe for disaster, stating that an inability to reach genuine, voluntary agreements among all competing interests is actively pushing the ruling party toward an internal implosion.

Addressing long-standing allegations that he handpicked and imposed his successor, the incumbent Governor of Ekiti State, Biodun Oyebanji, Fayemi strongly rejected the claims of political imposition. He maintained that having a personal preference or a preferred candidate is a normal part of democratic influence, but it becomes problematic when other contestants are forcefully blocked from participating.

He insisted that the Ekiti primary election that produced Oyebanji was highly competitive, transparent, and involved at least six other active aspirants who went to the field to exercise their franchise. Recalling his own political journey, Fayemi stated that despite his high profile as a returning governor and a freshly resigned federal minister at the time, he voluntarily subjected himself to a wide-open primary contest alongside 20 other aspirants rather than demanding a direct coronation from the party hierarchy.