Ogun oil exploration and the Olokola Deep Sea Port were born under Gbenga Daniel, not Dapo Abiodun. Here is the documented truth, told by those who were there.
There is a battle quietly raging over who deserves credit for some of the most consequential energy projects in Ogun State’s history, and it is a battle that living witnesses, documentary records, and two decades of archived evidence are determined to settle.
Governor Dapo Abiodun of Ogun State has, recently, positioned himself as the force behind Ogun oil exploration in Ogun Waterside and the drive towards oil-producing status for the state, while also laying claim to the Olokola Deep Sea Port as a project conceived under his watch.
Those who were present at the very beginning say the record tells a starkly different story.
The Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation Limited had announced that Ogun State had joined the list of oil-producing states, with oil exploration set to commence.
The news was received with understandable pride across the state.
Governor Abiodun welcomed the federal government delegation and hosted senior industry figures including the Minister of State for Petroleum Resources, Heineken Lokpobiri, at his office in Oke-Mosan, Abeokuta.
What followed, however, was a narrative that some of the original architects of these projects have described as a brazen rewriting of history.
Senator Gbenga Daniel, who now represents Ogun East in the National Assembly and who governed Ogun State from 2003 to 2011, said the declaration of the state as a frontier state for oil exploration was a fulfilment of the vision his administration kickstarted through the establishment of the Gateway Oil and Gas Development Limited in 2003, with significant support from former President Olusegun Obasanjo.
The roots of this ambition run far deeper than recent announcements suggest.
Those of us challenging Governor Abiodun’s claims are not simply engaging in partisan point-scoring. We are pointing to a verifiable chain of events.
In January 2004, the then Governor Otunba Daniel posed with Engineer Funsho Kupolokun, the Group Managing Director of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, alongside senior government officials after an Oil and Gas Interactive Session, a moment captured in photograph.
That same year, on 18th March 2004, American company OBED signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the Ogun State Government to construct a refinery at Olokola, a fact documented in archival materials from the Daniel administration’s own publications.
An Oil and Gas Committee was established during that period, chaired by Chief Alex Onabanjo, with Chief Bode Mustapha serving as Vice Chairman and Mr Femi Babalola as Secretary.
Other members included Idowu Togun, Wemmy Osude, Femi Mafe, and the late Chief Femi Tetede.
Crucially, the man who would later become governor and seek to claim credit for these same projects, Dapo Abiodun, served as Chairman of the Oil and Gas Committee under the Daniel administration.
It is during that period, sources close to the matter say, that the project stalled.
Chief Alex Onabanjo, Chief Bode Mustapha, and Mr Femi Babalola are all alive and available to speak to what happened.
The Daniel administration undertook a three-dimensional seismic study of oil and other mineral deposits in the state in 2008, following lobbying visits to Abuja.
The seismic survey covered a vast stretch of the water body in Ode Omi in Ogun Waterside Local Government, through the Laogo Island, Imobi, and Itasin riverine areas in Ijebu East Local Government, and on to Tongeji Island in Ipokia Local Government. That study sparked a $50 million investment pledge from PGS Exploration Nigeria Limited in April 2004.
The Olokola project, meanwhile, had its own unmistakable footprint in the Daniel years.
In March 2007, Governor Daniel signed a formal Memorandum of Understanding on the multibillion-dollar Olokola Liquefied Natural Gas project in Abuja, bringing together the Ogun and Ondo State governments as joint owners of the Olokola Free Trade Zone, alongside the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation, Chevron, Shell, and British Gas as project promoters.
The Ogun/Ondo Deep Sea Port and Export Processing Zone was a 20,000-hectare industrial enclave designed to harness the states’ vast untapped resources, positioned 45 kilometres east of Lekki in Lagos and some 400 kilometres west of Port Harcourt.
Documents from the period confirm that the Ogun State Government had already secured a licence to explore and refine bitumen along the axis where the Free Trade Zone sits, and that the NNPC in partnership with British Gas and Chevron Texaco was establishing an LNG plant valued at six billion naira within the zone.
Gbenga Daniel himself, in his statement on the matter, noted: “In 2007, a formal Memorandum of Understanding on a multibillion-dollar Olokola Liquefied Natural Gas project between Ogun and Ondo State governments and the NNPC, Chevron, Shell and British Gas was signed. The Olokola Free Trade Zone was also billed to host petro-allied establishments such as the Dangote Refinery, now relocated to Lagos.”
Engineer Kupolokun, then Group Managing Director of the NNPC, praised Daniel at the 2007 signing as someone who had worked relentlessly to bring the project to life.
The NNPC boss, who shared an alma mater connection with Daniel through Baptist Boys High School, Abeokuta, described him as a trailblazer and noted that the OKLNG project would enable Nigeria to achieve its national policy of aggressively developing and monetising its gas reserves.
He predicted far-reaching, long-term benefits including additional electricity generation capacity for the country.
The Ogun State Agro-Cargo Airport in Iperu/Ilishan and the Kajola Free Trade Zone in Ifo were also conceived under the Daniel administration to provide transport logistics hubs to support these same initiatives, a point Senator Daniel has stressed in his public statements.
Those of us challenging Governor Abiodun’s claims are not simply engaging in partisan point-scoring. We are pointing to a verifiable chain of events.
The Gateway Oil and Gas Development Limited was established in 2003.
The Oil and Gas Interactive Sessions with the NNPC began in January 2004.
An MoU with an American company for a refinery at Olokola was signed in March 2004.
Seismic studies were conducted in 2008.
The multibillion-dollar Olokola LNG MoU was signed in 2007.
Each of these milestones predates Governor Abiodun’s first day in office. That major projects of this scale germinate over many years and administrations before yielding fruit is neither unusual nor contested.
What is contested is the refusal to acknowledge those who planted the seeds.
Senator Daniel, to his credit, publicly congratulated Governor Abiodun on the development when it was announced in 2024, demonstrating a graciousness that his allies now feel has not been reciprocated.
The former governor urged Abiodun to revisit the Gateway Industrial and Petro-Gas Institute, established in 2006, and to prioritise the long-pending Makun Omi Bridge via Efire, a project planned during the Daniel years that remains unrealised.
The living members of the original Oil and Gas Committee, the signed documents, the photographs, and the published records all point in the same direction.
History, to those who were present at its making, cannot be rented out to those who arrived after the work was done.
Ojelabi, the publisher of Freelanews, is an award winning and professionally trained mass communicator and a recipient of the D9112 Superstar Icon Award, who writes ruthlessly about pop culture, religion, politics and entertainment.
