In the smoke-filled backrooms of Abeokuta’s political caucuses, Governor Dapo Abiodun has been playing a dangerous game.
Ahead of the 2027 electoral cycle, sources close to the closed-door meetings describe a familiar script: the outgoing governor dangling juicy future appointments like carrots before aspirants hungry for relevance.
The message is clear – play ball now, and your loyalty will be rewarded later.
But as one pointed political analysis puts it, “on what authority does an outgoing governor promise appointments? Those are decisions that belong squarely to whoever succeeds him in office.”
By the time Abiodun’s tenure winds down in 2027, those promises may turn to dust – or worse, landmines for the man who eventually takes the oath at Oke-Mosan.
Enter Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola, the man the streets simply call Yayi.
Flagbearer of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the Ogun governorship race, Yayi emerged in April 2026 as the party’s consensus candidate after months of intense horse-trading.
With blessing from Aso Rock, the Ogun heavyweights that produced him included – Abiodun himself, former governors Olusegun Osoba, Otunba Gbenga Daniel and Ibikunle Amosun.
What makes Abiodun’s manoeuvring even more audacious is the glaring reality of his own political fragility. The governor has little independent weight to throw around.
In his 2023 re-election, he scraped through by the skin of his teeth, polling 276,298 votes (42.83 percent) against PDP’s Oladipupo Adebutu’s 262,383 (40.67 percent) – a razor-thin margin of just 13,915 votes.
Even more telling, Abiodun could not command decisive victories in the polling units in front of his own house.
At his Ita-Osanyin Polling Unit in Iperu, Ikenne LGA (PU 002, Ward 3), he managed only a narrow victory in 2023: APC 147 to PDP 142. The pattern exposed the limits of his personal pull.
Without the magic Yayi pulled from his end; his deep Yewa structures, financial muscle, and grassroots mobilisation across Ogun West, Abiodun’s re-election would not have materialised.
Yayi, rooted in Ilaro and with a storied history of building bridges, delivered the votes and resources that tipped the scales in critical wards.
Abiodun did not rise on the benevolence of predecessor; he fought, negotiated, and won through raw alliances. Yet here he is, as a lame-duck governor with proven limited pull, attempting to script the post-2027 landscape with IOUs he has no guarantee of honouring.
Yayi is no political lightweight.
Born in Lagos in 1969 but rooted in Ilaro, Ogun West, the chartered accountant turned senator has built a reputation as a bridge-builder with deep pockets and grassroots structures across all 236 wards of the state.
He served as Senator for Lagos West from 2015 to 2023 before shifting to represent Ogun West in 2023; a move that signalled his long-term ambition for higher office in his ancestral home.
His “Yewa agenda” taps into a decades-old grievance: Ogun West (Yewa) is the only senatorial district yet to produce a governor since the state’s creation in 1976.
For many, Yayi’s emergence is not just about one man; it is about equity, about finally breaking the jinx.
The outcome? A proposed zoning formula: Yayi from West, deputy from Central, Secretary to the State Government from East. It was politics as usual; deals struck in the shadows, loyalty extracted in exchange for future favours.
Political observers are right to sound the alarm. Recall Abiodun’s own rise. in 2023, his victory, by narrow margin, depended heavily on figures like Yayi.
Yet here he is, as a lame-duck governor, attempting to script the post-2027 landscape. The danger is obvious: any successor bound by such pre-signed IOUs starts office compromised.
What happens when those promises clash with governance realities?
When the man in the saddle must choose between honouring backroom pacts and delivering for the people? The party risks entering 2027 with a fractured structure, aspirants nursing grievances, and a candidate whose mandate feels borrowed rather than earned.
Yayi’s backers will argue the consensus route was mature leadership; averting the costly primaries that tore the APC apart in previous cycles and presenting a united front to President Bola Tinubu.
This is where the call rings loudest: Yayi, man up, man! The streets are watching.
Nigeria has seen too many anointed candidates who arrived in office as extensions of their godfathers; only to spend their terms repaying debts instead of building legacies.
Yayi has the pedigree: the structures, the funds, the Yewa mandate, and the ear of the presidency.
But if he allows himself to be absorbed into Abiodun’s exit-stage politics; if he becomes the face of those dangling appointments rather than the architect of his own vision, he risks inheriting not just the governorship but the baggage that comes with it. Especially from a governor whose own re-election exposed the limits of his personal political capital.
Man up means charting an independent course. It means publicly distancing himself from any post-tenure IOUs that tie his hands. It means walking into Oke-Mosan in 2027 as his own man; answerable first to the people of Ogun, not to the caucus deals of 2026 or the fading influence of a leader who needed Yayi’s magic to survive 2023.
It means using his senate record, his business acumen, and his ward-level machinery to build something authentic, not inherited.
Yayi has thanked Tinubu, the ex-governors, and the party. Fair enough. Gratitude is good politics. But independence is better leadership.
Ogun State stands at a crossroads. For the first time in decades, the governorship could rotate to Ogun West.
The APC has a chance to script a smooth transition; the first acrimony-free handover since 1999. But smooth does not mean servile.
Also read: Yayi wants the crown, but OGD already built the kingdom
The real test for Yayi is not whether he can win the ticket; he already has. The test is whether he can wear the crown without becoming a puppet to yesterday’s deals; or to a lame-duck patron whose own record shows the perils of borrowed strength.
Yayi, the people of Ogun West have waited long enough. The Yewa agenda is yours to own. But own it fully. Step out of the shadows of the caucuses. Reject the lame-duck promises that could cripple day one. Speak directly to the farmers in Yewa, the traders in Abeokuta, the youth in Ijebu.
Tell them your vision is yours; not borrowed, not compromised.
Man up, Yayi.
The governorship is not a gift. It is a mandate. Claim it like a man.
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.
