If Adebutu wants to be governor, he should tell Ogun people what he intends to do differently. He should explain his record in business and public life, and how that experience has prepared him to manage the complex machinery of government
There is a Yoruba saying that the elder does not sit in the market and watch the newborn’s head become crooked:
Àgbà kì í wà l’ọ́jà, kí orí ọmọ tuntun wọ́.
It is a proverb about presence and responsibility—the duty of those who have seen more to intervene when the younger generation is about to make a costly mistake.
It came to mind last Wednesday as I read the headlines from Abeokuta, where Oladipupo Adebutu, the Ogun State Peoples Democratic Party governorship candidate for 2027, told a gathering at the Ake Palace Pavilion that Ogun State had suffered fifteen years of hardship.
I was not in that market. But I have been around long enough to recognise a campaign speech when I hear one, and to recognise when political rhetoric is accompanied by mischief. I have also seen enough elections to know that the politician who shouts loudest about the people’s suffering is often the one most eager to secure their votes.
This is not cynicism. It is pattern recognition.
I have written enough about governance in our states to understand the suspicion that sometimes accompanies criticism of those in power. But I also believe that when a politician tells us that the house is on fire, we should at least check whether he is holding a match.
Adebutu says Ogun has endured fifteen years of hardship. But the data available to the public suggests otherwise—or, at the very least, tells a far more complicated story.
When Governor Dapo Abiodun assumed office in 2019, Ogun State’s GDP was approximately N2.9 trillion. By 2024, it had risen to about N7.3 trillion, while projections put it significantly higher today. Internally Generated Revenue also rose from N50.6 billion in 2020 to nearly N192 billion in 2024, with the state targeting N250 billion.
These figures have been debated, and fact-checkers have applied alternative adjustments to some of the numbers. Even so, the broader trend points to economic expansion and measurable progress, not fifteen uninterrupted years of decline.
Adebutu’s sweeping description of fifteen years of hardship therefore raises a fundamental question: where is the evidence?
The pension record is similarly inconvenient for a simplistic liberation narrative.
The Finance Commissioner, Dapo Okubadejo, disclosed in February that the state had cleared gratuity arrears for retirees from 2012 to 2020, paid N23.3 billion in gratuities, and addressed N32.8 billion in inherited obligations involving local government retirees.
Between 2019 and July 2025, according to government figures, N93.26 billion was paid to state pensioners under the Defined Benefits Scheme, while N94.78 billion went to their local government counterparts.
The government also maintains that it has not missed a single month of pension payments since 2019. On Adebutu’s assertion that workers who retired from July 2025 were denied their entitlements, the government says more than 300 such retirees are receiving six-month palliatives pending completion of documentation.
Again, the picture is not a neat tale of villainy on one side and victimhood on the other.
None of this means Ogun State is without challenges. Far from it. Every responsible government must be scrutinised, and every administration must be held accountable.
If Adebutu had built his campaign around verifiable facts and specific shortcomings, he would have a stronger case. Instead, he reached for the grand narrative of fifteen years of darkness—a narrative that is easier to shout at a rally than to defend with evidence.
What troubles me most about this episode is not Adebutu. It is us.
We have become a people who sometimes struggle to distinguish between a press release and a news story, between a campaign speech and a governance record.
I have spent enough years in this business to know that politicians will always exaggerate. That is part of the nature and trade of politics. The question is whether those of us who claim to report will amplify political claims or interrogate them.
The function of a free press is not to transcribe power’s version of events, whether that power sits in Government House or in an opposition campaign office.
It is to ask:
Where is the evidence? What does the record show? What has changed? Who benefits from this story being told this way?
Adebutu ended his address with a flourish:
“For over 31 unbroken years, my roots, my wealth, my enterprises and my sweat have been irreversibly planted in the soil of Ogun State.”
It is a fine line, as political poetry goes. But poetry is not policy, and a campaign is not a covenant.
If Adebutu wants to be governor, he should tell Ogun people what he intends to do differently. He should explain his record in business and public life, and how that experience has prepared him to manage the complex machinery of government.
He should tell us, in practical terms, how he intends to grow Ogun’s economy. He should explain how he would address pensions and other obligations. Most importantly, he should demonstrate how his “ITURA DE” agenda would survive contact with the fiscal realities that constrain every governor in Nigeria.
“Relief has come,” he says.
We have heard promises of relief before.
In 2019, the man Adebutu now seeks to replace campaigned on a “Building Our Future” agenda. That future is now here, and the legitimate question is whether enough of it has been built.
That is a debate worth having.
But it cannot be had if one side is allowed to write the headline while the other is left shouting into the wind.
The Case for YAYI
In Ogun State, the case for Governor Dapo Abiodun—and for the political succession represented by Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola, popularly known as Yayi—rests, in our view, on projects and interventions that can be seen, measured and assessed.
The Gateway International Airport in Iperu-Remo, with its four-kilometre runway, customs facilities and aviation infrastructure, represents a major addition to Ogun’s economic and transportation landscape. The airport has also attracted commercial aviation interest, including Air Peace operations.
Add to this more than 1,600 kilometres of roads reportedly constructed or rehabilitated under the present administration, and the argument that Ogun has simply been retrogressing becomes difficult to sustain.
There is also the Muhammadu Buhari Estate, the 200-bed Gateway Medical Centre, the 34.1MW Onijanganjangan Independent Power Project and the reported completion of 140 primary healthcare centres.
These are not campaign slogans. They are projects that can be visited, inspected and evaluated.
And the man being positioned to carry the baton forward has not been idle while waiting for his turn.
Within three years, Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola has, in my assessment, demonstrated a visible commitment to development across Ogun’s three senatorial districts.
One example is the construction, full furnishing and delivery of a 12-classroom block at Baptist Boys’ High School (BBHS), Abeokuta, in Abeokuta North Local Government Area, complete with staff rooms and a library facility.
Such interventions provide a basis for assessing leadership beyond speeches and political slogans.
So, when someone wakes up today and tells you that Ogun State is simply retrogressing, the appropriate response is not insult.
Ask for the evidence.
Show us the numbers. Show us the projects. Show us what has improved and what has deteriorated. Let the people compare the record with the rhetoric.
The elders are in the market.
They know the difference between what was said at the Ake Palace Pavilion and what the available evidence shows. They should speak. And those who report what was said should do their jobs—not merely repeat political declarations, but interrogate them.
Adebutu’s “Call to Liberation” may yet prove to be a cry for power dressed in the language of the people. Or it may be the beginning of a genuine reckoning. The voters will decide. But they can only decide wisely if we give them facts, not echoes.*
The voters will decide.
But voters can only decide wisely when they are given facts, context and competing records—not echoes.
Ogun must be YAYIFIED by May 29, 2027.
Arabambi Abayomi
(STORM)
Director-General, Coalition of Opposition Parties in Support of YAYI for Governor 2027
•Opinions, positions or thoughts expressed here are personal and strictly of the writer/author and do not represent the views of The Daily Crucible.
