APC Holds Post-Election Inquest, Finds Everyone Guilty Except the Party

In the proud Nigerian tradition of losing gracefully, the All Progressives Congress has entered its most sacred post-election ritual: the internal blame Olympics. Wole Oke has stepped forward to explain, at length, why the party cannot yet bring itself to congratulate Governor Adeleke, a courtesy so simple that toddlers manage it at birthday parties, yet somehow requires a chieftain and a press briefing to withhold.

Meanwhile, Aliyu has offered the party's official internal account of the Osun defeat, a genre of Nigerian political literature that never once, in the history of the republic, has concluded with "our candidate was simply not preferred." Early drafts of the report are said to cite internal sabotage, insufficient grassroots mobilisation, disloyal foot soldiers, hostile weather, and, sources suspect, possibly the moon's gravitational pull. The one variable never investigated is whether Osun voters simply looked at both options and chose the other one, a hypothesis so radical no chieftain has dared submit it for review.

The congratulatory message, Nigeria's most inexpensive political gesture, remains locked in committee, presumably awaiting sixteen signatures, a security vote, and a subcommittee report on whether losing with dignity sets a dangerous precedent. Analysts note the APC has, historically, always found the strength to congratulate winners from its own party within minutes, suggesting the delay is not logistical but philosophical: congratulations, like electricity, only flow when the connection benefits the sender.

The blame-trading itself has become a spectator sport, chieftains publicly relitigating the campaign with the enthusiasm of men who genuinely believe their own alibi. Each new account manages to implicate everyone in the party except the person giving the account, a statistical impossibility Nigerians have simply learned to accept, the way we accept NEPA's weather-based apologies.

At press time, the search for who exactly lost Osun continued, with the only consensus being that it definitely wasn't the candidate, the campaign, or the message. It was, apparently, everyone else, all at once, working independently, toward the same accident.