Every election season, the same scenario plays out in Ogun State. Family history is questioned. Home ownership is scrutinised. Senate districts become battlegrounds of identity. The 2027 gubernatorial election follows this pattern, with Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola’s long tenure in Lagos cited by his opponents as a weakness in his Ogun identity.
However, a state with Ogun’s potential deserves better than a rehash of old squabbles. The most important questions voters are asking are neither new nor complex. Who can govern from day one? Who understands the strain on public finances, the urgent need for infrastructure, the pressure on employment, the need for schools, and the everyday struggles of ordinary families? These are the issues that should define 2027, not family house politics. Ogun doesn’t need a governor based on family lineage. It needs a governor based on competence.
In our politics, lineage is invoked far too often when performance analysis is difficult. When a person’s career path is minimal, people exaggerate their origins. When their influence is visible, the conversation shifts from devotion to genealogy. Identity mobilises the masses, but it doesn’t build roads, create jobs, or strengthen the institutions we need. This is the poverty of identity politics, as it merely generates enthusiasm at campaign rallies and leaves the state exactly where it found it. Or make it worse.
However, Adeola’s origins are undeniable. His paternal roots trace back to Ago-Isaga and Pahayi in Ilaro, while his maternal lineage links him to Kemta in Egbaland. Traditional leaders, temporal and spiritual authorities, merchants, and other key players in Yewa and Egbaland have recognised him as omo oye, a legitimate son of the region’s cultural and political heritage. If the guardians of that heritage have spoken so clearly, then it is just and sensible that the entire state of Ogun accept him as one of their own. He should not be treated as an outsider seeking borrowed legitimacy, but as a leader whose identity the communities to which he belongs have validated.
More pressing issues lie elsewhere. Should a strategic state like Ogun sacrifice its future in a debate that cannot guarantee the livelihoods of its people or repair a single road? Its farmers need better roads to transport their crops, storage facilities, and credit to increase yields. Its traders need stronger markets and security. Its youth need more jobs, training, and greater opportunities. Its communities need water, electricity, schools, and truly functional primary healthcare. Its industrial corridors need infrastructure that matches the investment. None of these challenges will be solved by arguing over district names.
Governing is not for amateurs. The responsibilities of the executive office are too weighty to rely on sentimentality, improvisation, or trial and error. A governor must understand budgetary language, respect institutional discipline, master the politics of negotiation, and have the patience to translate priorities into measurable results.
Adeola has come a long way in public service. From the Lagos State House of Representatives, where he served from 2003 to 2011 and chaired the Finance Committee, to the House of Representatives, where he chaired the Public Accountability Committee, and then to the Senate, first for Lagos West and since 2023 for Ogun West. His career has been a continuous learning experience in legislation, oversight, district management, and the complex relationship between politics and public finance. As a certified public accountant and current chair of the Senate Budget Committee, he sits at the heart of the national budget, where the numbers must add up, competing demands for public funds must be considered, and fiscal priorities must be championed beyond mere rhetoric. The fact that he comes to these responsibilities with a technical background in accounting further strengthens the argument that he brings substance to a field often saturated with noise.
Ogun is too strategic a state to be learnt on the job. It’s an industrial, border state, a manufacturing corridor, and a neighbour of Lagos. The next governor must understand money, policy, negotiation, and implementation, and shouldn’t spend their first few years learning the fundamentals of governance. The state needs a leader who can meet with technocrats, engage development partners, evaluate public procurement options, interpret the budget beyond its formal presentation, and take projects from promise to document and from document to construction. Adeola’s greatest appeal lies precisely in this, as he appears ready to take office in Oke-Mosan with a practical understanding of the system.
Politics only has meaning when it impacts people’s lives. In almost all communities of Ogun State, Adeola’s interventions have achieved precisely that. Roads have been built and rehabilitated. Access to rural areas has improved. Solar-powered streetlights have extended commercial activity and community life well past nightfall. These small but tangible improvements are how ordinary citizens assess whether the government is truly present.
Their empowerment programmes have benefited women, artisans, young entrepreneurs, and small business owners. In times of economic hardship, this kind of support is not a luxury. A grant, a sewing machine, business equipment, or a new skill can mean the difference between dependency and dignity for an entire family. The Oloja Yayi Market Support Fund has become a symbol of this approach. Nigeria’s informal economy bears the brunt of daily life’s hardships, and support for vendors quickly translates into school tuition, job training, food, and necessities.
It’s easy to overlook these interventions in elite conversations, but those who understand the social economy of our communities know this well.
Education is not neglected either. Classrooms, ICT support, and scholarships reflect the state’s future. Ogun cannot continue to project itself as an industrial destination if it neglects the human resources that must drive those ambitions, as factories need workers, technology needs skilled minds, and development needs an educated citizenry. Healthcare, water, and electricity are also part of his interventions in primary healthcare centres, drinking water systems, transformers, thus ensuring that public services are not luxuries, but they essential for daily survival. Governance is most meaningful when it solves everyday problems.
Critics who focus on the sheer number of these projects miss the fundamental message. Their true value lies in their vision and scope: policy should impact lives, open doors, and improve communities. Equally important, their dissemination beyond a narrow base reinforces the argument that Adeola’s gubernatorial aspirations are comprehensive in conception, not sectoral in design.
It has become fashionable to pretend that access is unimportant in Nigeria’s federal system. In fact, access is crucial. States do not develop in isolation but thrive through a clear vision, quality leadership, and the ability to negotiate with the central government without sacrificing local priorities. Any governor who understands the mechanisms of national power has a distinct advantage in attracting attention, resources, and strategic alliances.
Adeola’s role in the Senate budget process places him at the intersection of national priorities and public spending. Properly leveraged for Ogun, this proximity could further accelerate the rehabilitation and expansion of key federal highways traversing the state, strengthen the need for rail and industrial port connections, and capitalise on federal trade policy and special economic zone incentives to attract manufacturing hubs and logistics investment. This could further help channel federal agricultural interventions, climate resilience funding, and digital economy initiatives directly to Ogun’s rural and urban communities.
Lest anyone misunderstand, this is not a call for Ogun to become dependent on Abuja. Rather, it calls for leadership that knows how to secure the state’s share while strengthening its own economy. A governor who understands the seat of government can negotiate more effectively, attract more investment, and achieve results more quickly. And Ogun’s location makes this ability even more crucial: the state shares Lagos’s economic dynamism, serves as an industrial gateway to Nigeria, and has enormous potential in manufacturing, agriculture, logistics, and entrepreneurship. But geography is only an advantage in the hands of leadership that knows how to use it, a leadership that can engage with investors, negotiate with Abuja, and, at the same time, understand rural roads, market stalls, and public schools. In this, Adeola is uniquely positioned as the most able of all contestants to expand the successes of the Governor Dapo Abiodun administration.
The issue of Ogun West Senatorial District remains one of the most unresolved matters in the state’s political history. Since 1976, Ogun East and Ogun Central have produced governors multiple times, while Ogun West has been waiting. This fact carries real moral and political weight as it speaks to inclusion, balance, and the need for every part of the state to feel empowered in the highest office.
However, equality should not be reduced to mere sentimentality, and the governorship is too important to be granted simply as compensation. Ogun West’s strongest argument in 2027 will not be based solely on grievances, but on the quality of the candidate it presents. In Adeola, the region offers a man who can argue from experience and equality, grounded in commitment and preparation.
The 2027 elections will test Ogun’s political maturity. The state can waste another season arguing over trivial matters, or it can confront the real question before it: who has the preparation, scope, experience, and discipline necessary to propel Ogun’s progress?
Adeola isn’t perfect. No candidate is. But politics isn’t a search for angels but a choice between people with verifiable track records. In that sense, his experience is tangible, his networks are valuable, his knowledge of public finances is proven, and his connection to grassroots politics is evident. His opponents are free to refute these claims, as is appropriate in a democracy. But Ogun’s voters must insist that these arguments transcend rumours.
Ogun State doesn’t need a merely ceremonial governor in 2027. It needs a builder, someone with the confidence to negotiate, the discipline to manage resources, and the courage to bring development to every district. The state must look beyond appearances and prioritise substance. Each candidate must be judged on their preparation, competence, temperament, vision, and ability to execute. By these criteria, Yayi has presented Ogun State with a case it cannot wish away.
Adeolu Adebari, the Managing Partner, Constellation Holdings, writes from Itoko, Abeokuta, Ogun State https://punchng.com/politics-beyond-family-history/
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