2027: Tinubu rejects lobbyists pushing for Desmond Elliot’s 4th term — Sources

By Dapo Akinrefon

The move by a member of the Lagos State House of Assembly, Desmond Elliot, to secure a 4th term has suffered a setback, Vanguard has learned.

Multiple Presidency sources disclosed that President Bola Tinubu is said to have, at different times, rebuffed separate appeals from powerful individuals sent to him.

It was further gathered that pleas for the President to override the decision of Surulere APC stakeholders, who had thrown their weight behind the immediate past Lagos Special Adviser on Housing, Barakat Odunuga-Bakare, as his replacement, part of a decision to encourage women and gender inclusion, fell on deaf ears.

Sources disclosed that at various points, Elliot reportedly dispatched a retired General, his wife, a Senator; a current serving Minister and an ally of the President, at different times to “make his case at the Villa.”

Each of them reportedly failed to get Tinubu’s nod for Elliot’s 4th term bid as the President insisted on respect for internal democracy.

In each of the separate engagements, it was gathered that “Tinubu’s position did not waver.”

He told those who came that the decision by the majority of the Surulere stakeholders and that he had no intention of going against his Chief of Staff, Femi Gbajabiamila, whom he described as the GAC Leader in Surulere and a pillar of Surulere’s development for years.

The President reportedly went further to explain that the direct primary election will “indicate who commands popular control of Surulere APC politics, not external influence.”

He went further, revealing to one of the visitors that he never knew Desmond Elliot until 12 years ago, when former President Olusegun Obasanjo asked him to persuade Gbajabiamila to accommodate the actor in the 2015 Lagos Assembly contest.

He also disclosed that it was Gbajabiamila who later begged Surulere people to accept Elliot all through his three consecutive terms in office.

“If the people who carried Desmond for twelve years can no longer defend him, that says everything about the boy’s character and performance,” the President was quoted as saying during one of the meetings.

Tinubu, it was further gathered, also raised the spectre of the Fubara-Wike crisis, warning that “a politician who ignores the people who built him and defies public sentiment puts himself in dangerous territory.”

The President, it was gathered, said he would never side with “undemocratic tendencies in his state.

His position across all the meetings was consistent. If Elliot believes he can beat Odunuga-Bakare and Gbajabiamila’s structure at the primaries, the arena is open.

The President declined to impose Elliot’s 4th term bid on Surulere.

Despite the repeated presidential rebuffs at separate sittings, sources say Elliot is still banking on a close ally of the President and a female Senator “to approach President Tinubu once more while the President is currently in France, hoping for a last-minute reversal of the overwhelming endorsements of Barakat Odunuga-Bakare ahead of the Surulere 1 State Assembly primary slated for May 20, 2026.”

Speaking on the development, the Surulere Accountability Front, SAF, insisted on the rejection of Elliot’s fourth-term ambition by the majority of community stakeholders in Surulere.

SAF’s Chairman, Olanrewaju Badmus, described Elliot’s 12 years in office as “12 years of poor representation, political instability and character deficits.”

Badmus said: “Most of the Surulere youths are tired of him and don’t see him as a role model. Power is transient and only God gives power to whom He desires. The call for change in Surulere 1’s representation at Lagos House of Assembly is not accidental. It is the verdict of a constituency that has been patient long enough.”

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