Mojisoluwa O Akinfenwa was elected Senator for the Osun East constituency of Osun State

Osun State

Ọṣun State is an inland state in south-western Nigeria. Its capital is Osogbo. It is bounded in the north by Kwara State, in the east partly by Ekiti State and partly by Ondo State, in the south by Ogun State and in the west by Oyo State. The state's current governor is Rauf Aregbesola, who was...

, Nigeria

Nigeria

Nigeria , officially the Federal Republic of Nigeria, is a federal constitutional republic comprising 36 states and its Federal Capital Territory, Abuja. The country is located in West Africa and shares land borders with the Republic of Benin in the west, Chad and Cameroon in the east, and Niger in...

 at the start of the Nigerian Fourth Republic

Nigerian Fourth Republic

The Fourth Republic is the republican government of Nigeria. Since 1999 it has governed the country according to the fourth republican constitution. It was in many ways a revival of the Second Republic, which was in place between 1979 and 1983 and suffers many of the same problems, such as multiple...

, running on the Alliance for Democracy

Alliance for Democracy (Nigeria)

The Alliance for Democracy was a progressive opposition political party in Nigeria. It was formed on September 9th 1998. At the 2003 legislative elections, 12 April 2003, the party won 8.8 % of the popular vote and 34 out of 360 seats in the Nigerian House of Representatives and six out of...

 (AD) platform. He took office on 29 May 1999.
After taking his seat in the Senate in June 1999 he was appointed to committees on Selection, Senate Services, Solid Minerals, Banking & Currency and Education.

In December 2003 Alhaji Ahmed Abdulkadir, outgoing national chairman of Alliance for Democracy party wrote to the Independent National Electoral Commission

Independent National Electoral Commission

The Independent National Electoral Commission , set up in 1998, is the electoral body which was set up to oversee elections in Nigeria.The INEC has encountered several controversies in the run-up to the April 2007 general elections, including criticism about its preparedness from Sada Abubakar,...

 (INEC) naming Akinfenwa as the new national chairman.
The party had split into two rival factions, with the other led by Chief Bisi Akande.
In February 2004 the INEC summoned a meeting of AD leaders that excluded the two rival chairman in an effort to resolve the situation.
Continued efforts to resolve the split were ineffective.
The Yoruba

Yoruba people

The Yoruba people are one of the largest ethnic groups in West Africa. The majority of the Yoruba speak the Yoruba language...

 socio-political organisation, Afenifere

Afenifere

Afenifere was formed as a socio-cultural organization for the Yoruba people of Nigeria, with Abraham Adesanya as its leader and Chief Bola Ige as deputy leader. Other founding members were Pa Onasanya, Chief Reuben Fasoranti, Adegbonmire, Okurounmu Femi, Ganiyu Dawodu, Olanihun Ajayi, Olu Falae,...

, threw its weight behind Akinfenwa, a move criticized at a meeting of former AD Governors of South-West states in August 2004.
In a February 2006 interview Akinfenwa continued to insist that he was the AD chairman, not Akande.