When the Lagos APC released its campaign council list on Thursday, September 17, 2026, Toyin Abraham's name was on it. The actress says she found out the way everyone else did: she woke up and read it online.
Abraham was listed as a member of the party's Entertainment and Creative Economy Directorate, alongside Jide Kosoko, Eniola Badmus, Bimbo Akintola, Adebayo Salami, Saheed Balogun and Bukky Wright. She did not stay quiet about it. On Instagram, she wrote: "I'm not a member of any campaign council. I have said it recently. I am staying out of politics." She asked the public to disregard her reported inclusion.
The next day, September 18, she addressed it again. An X user had suggested that rejecting the role might spare her another round of online bullying. Abraham said that was not the reason. She repeated that she had woken up to discover her name on a list she knew nothing about and that she had no interest in politics.
The rejection is a sharp reversal from where she stood three years ago. In 2023, Abraham was one of the most visible entertainers backing Bola Tinubu's presidential campaign. She met Tinubu alongside then-Lagos governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu and posted about the meeting, saying that listening to Tinubu's ideas and plans had renewed her hope and reaffirmed why he was her choice.
That decision brought sustained backlash. In March 2023, Abraham said supporters of Peter Obi had petitioned Netflix to remove her films and had targeted brands associated with her. She said she was receiving insults and curses directed at her, her husband Kolawole Ajeyemi, and their son.
The criticism did not stop after the election. It intensified as Nigerians faced worsening economic conditions under the new administration. By June 4, 2024, Abraham was publicly reckoning with the choice she had made. When asked on X what Tinubu's camp had promised her during the campaign, she said she had been assured of "good governance and happiness for everyone."
That same day, the backlash turned personal in a different way. During an Instagram Live, Abraham broke down while discussing people attacking her over her political choice. She said she would not accept attacks involving her young son or other members of her family.
The June episode was not the end of it. In July 2024, Abraham took legal action against social media users over what she described as cyberbullying, threats and defamatory statements involving her and her family. One dispute centred on an X user known as Big Ayo, who accused her of using money allegedly linked to Tinubu to pay for her husband's hair transplant. Abraham denied the allegation and reported the matter to the cybercrime authorities. She also denied claims that she had caused the man's mother to be arrested, explaining that she had filed a complaint as a citizen because of what she described as threats and attacks against her family.
Her decision to involve the police became its own controversy. Critics questioned whether the criminal justice system should have been used in what they regarded as a dispute over alleged defamation and online speech. The episode reignited calls from some Nigerians for her films to be removed from streaming platforms.
Against that background, her latest rejection has a clear chronology. In 2023, she campaigned openly for Tinubu. In 2024, she faced sustained criticism over that choice, said she had "learnt her lesson" and would keep future political choices private, and became embroiled in a separate dispute over her response to online attacks. In September 2026, her name appeared on an APC campaign council list, and she immediately said she was not part of it.
For now, the Lagos APC's published list carries her name. Abraham says she is staying out of the campaign.
According to Pulse.ng.
