Sunday Tribune columnist, a modern-day philosopher in his own right, Festus Adedayo, had in his offering on August 24, 2025, asked this question: “Is Emilokan audacity or incantation ritual?” In that essay, he also went ahead to dissect the possibility of the words of candidate Bola Ahmed Tinubu in the 2023 electioneering campaign carrying more than the ordinary effects. He actually suspected that the Emilokan declaration by Tinubu may not be ordinary words and that “a sprinkle of scholars” believed that the Abeokuta, Ogun State, outburst of the then APC presidential hopeful might have carried some talismanic effects that possibly propelled him to the nation’s presidency.
Whatever it was, we have also heard that a political strategy once deployed loses its surprise element and can only be replicated among some sleeping dudes. In Ibadan, Oyo State, one politician is trying to rewrite that long-held belief, and his name is Adebayo Adelabu, Nigeria’s Minister of Power. Last week, the minister found himself before the elders of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Saki, Oyo North Senatorial District, where he announced himself as the crown prince for the Oyo State governorship seat in 2027. He told the gathering of his party’s leaders that he had paid his dues and that, having contested in 2019 and 2023 against the incumbent Governor Seyi Makinde, it was his turn (Emilokan) to rule the state in 2027.
It is possible that Adelabu had read Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, especially Mark Anthony’s conclusion that “Ambition should be made of sterner stuff,” and thus decided to adopt Tinubu’s incantation/audacious declaration of ‘Emilokan’. Going by my previous encounter with Adelabu sometime ago at the Ibadan airport, when he wrongly accused me of targeting him, I should have just left him to his wits. But my late father would say that the truth would not bar you from telling it, no matter how bitter. And then, the man is occupying a public office, he is open to scrutiny from like and unlike quarters; add that to the fact that he is seeking to run Oyo State, which is not only my state of origin, but a place I have also committed time and energy in recent years. He thus deserves to be told the naked truth, whether it is palatable to his ears or not. If the truth must be told, Adelabu’s declaration in Oke-Ogun is nothing but a misadventure. First, it was an affront to the nation’s electoral law, which forbids the start of a campaign before the electoral commission blows the whistle. You can talk about it in parables and set up structures, but an open declaration for office should not take place before the time set by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
That aside, his declaration insults the mentality of the Oyo State people and their capability to choose who is fit to govern them. As if there is a turn-by-turn gubernatorial list that has been compiled by some forces he is privy to. And what is the foundation of his Emilokan mantra? That he has been defeated twice by the incumbent governor, whose term of office would terminate on May 28, 2027. I think that’s a poor reading of Asiwaju Tinubu’s Emilokan chant/ declaration. Tinubu’s Emilokan outburst was for me, more than what Adedayo narrowed it to-incantation ritual or audacity- it was borne out of deep political frustrations the man was faced with at the time. A sort of protest against the perceived ingratitude of the then establishment, to a man who practically did all that was possible to wake the late President Muhammadu Buhari up from deep political slumber. Adelabu said he had lost the election twice against Seyi Makinde, and so when he comes the third time, he should be simply crowned by the people. That’s a strange calculation, whether you are applying mathematical theorems or accounting procedures. The people of Oyo State and most of Yorubaland have their ways around politics. You just have to find ways to connect with them. The people of Oyo State, particularly, are averse to this thing they Yoruba call Ajele. It means that you must have a way of being in their reckoning, for positive reasons in times past; otherwise, you remain on the fringes of power till God knows when.
But in seeking to plagiarise Tinubu, Adelabu failed to x-ray all that culminated in Asiwaju’s Abeokuta outburst? Is he privy to the 2010/2011 political maneuverings of the acclaimed progressive politicians who were seeking out Buhari as an anchor? Is he aware that the late President Buhari had signed off after he was defeated by President Goodluck Jonathan in 2011 and wept openly on national television while saying goodbye to Nigeria’s politics? Is he aware that Tinubu provided close to 70 per cent of the election funds that brought Buhari into office in 2015? Is he also aware that the same Tinubu was almost named the running mate to Buhari in 2015 but had to be forced to eat the humble pie by forces that enlisted the services of a former Nigerian President, who told him to ‘perish the thought’? Is he equally aware that the same Tinubu was not given the privilege to nominate a single minister into Buhari’s cabinet and that he had to embark on what looked like a self-exile in one West African country, when the government he installed was about to turn the heat on him? Was he told that the same Tinubu had to do whatever it took to warm himself into reckoning in the APC and into the hearts of the then reigning cabal to enable him to contest the 2023 election? If a man had fought all those battles and many other silent ones, is it not enough to provoke an outburst when he started seeing signals that the opportunity to present himself for public office is slipping off? So, there is no correlation between the Abeokuta Emilokan declaration and the entitlement mentality of Minister Adelabu.
But Adelabu’s Saki declaration may be a sort of repeat of the derisive scenes Professor Wole Soyinka painted in his famous work Ibadan: The Penkelemes years, a Memoir (1946-1965), a book in which the Nobel Laureate applied faction as a style, to paint a vivid picture of the politics of Chief Adegoke Adelabu, the minister’s grandfather. According to the book, the older Adelabu had been accused of mismanaging some funds that belonged to the Ibadan local council, but rather than mount a fierce defence, the politician simply drove his newly acquired car to the centre of Ibadan, Dugbe at the time, opened the doors widely and told his supporters to have a feel and see why he was the target of opposition’s attacks. That action, as recorded in Ibadan: The Penkelemes years, led supporters of the politician to burst out with the song: Maa ko wo wa na/Igunnu lo ni Tapa/Tapa loni igunnu/ Maa ko wo wa na. His supporters were merely telling him that he should feel free to spend their money anyhow he liked because he was one of their own. You can be sure that even at this age, such a scene would draw pity and laughter at the same time.
But beyond jokes, contesting elections or winning a governorship seat goes beyond the age of the contest. In this clime, we have seen former Vice President Atiku Abubakar contesting for the presidency since 1993. He had been on the ballot in 2007, 2019, and 2023. He lost on each occasion. Even in the same Oyo State, Senator Teslim Folarin had also lost the gubernatorial election twice, one in 2015 and again in 2023. We also read the story of the 16th President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, who failed many electoral contests and in almost all endeavours before finally getting the presidency. Rather than placing the hope of his gubernatorial contest on the Saki version of Emilokan, I believe that Adelabu, as I once advised in a statement, should know how to market his politics. He was given a glorious chance to shine in a badly mismanaged sector when President Tinubu made him the Minister of Power. His ambition and that of any other minister or public office holders, who aspire to any other positions, should be based on the scorecard they have amassed on the current beat.
Rather than chorusing the Emilokan chant, Adelabu should be telling the people of Ibadan, Ogbomoso, Oyo, Oke-Ogun, and Ibarapa how he has removed their towns and villages from the blinding darkness they had suffered in the hands of NEPA, PHCN, which they are still suffering in the hands of the Disco. He should be telling them how he intends to remove the apartheid policy he inflicted on Nigeria via the electricity BAND policy, and how he intends to make electricity supply available to all indigenes and residents of the state, as well as all Nigerians, regardless of their status in the society. If his contest is based on a verifiable performance chart rather than an unbecoming entitlement mentality, many may wish to consider his quest. But a campaign that offers no developmental objective for the electorate but is already marred by controversy among the youths over a N12 million largesse deserves some rethink.
(Published by the Sunday Tribune, October 12, 2025)
