By Abimbola Adekunle
Chief Bisi Ilaka: The Candidate Oyo State Needs
It is in this context that the candidacy of Chief Bisi Ilaka of the African Democratic Congress deserves serious national attention. He is not simply the non-Ibadan candidate in a field of Ibadan aspirants. He is a candidate whose personal record, character, and vision make him the most compelling choice for Oyo State at this particular moment in its history.
Chief Ilaka is a man formed by Oyo politics and steeped in its traditions. His understanding of the state’s complex political geography, its inter-zonal dynamics, its traditional institutional structures, is not theoretical. It has been built through years of engagement at every level of the state’s political and civic life. He is a man who moves comfortably between the modern boardroom and the traditional palace, and in Oyo State, that combination is not a luxury but a necessity. The traditional stools of Oyo State carry enormous moral authority, and a governor who understands and respects that authority can govern with a legitimacy that no amount of party structure alone can manufacture.
His character is defined by the Yoruba concept of omoluabi: the person of good breeding, moral rectitude, humility in success, and firmness in principle. These are not abstractions in Oyo State politics. They are the currency of trust, and trust is what a state that has been governed for 26 years by one zone needs most from its next leader. A governor who comes to office as the candidate of equity, without the baggage of factional warfare, and with the moral authority of a man known for straight dealing, can begin to heal the divisions that prolonged dominance has produced.
VI. The California of Africa: A Vision With Legs
Chief Ilaka’s vision for Oyo State is not a campaign slogan. It is a structured argument rooted in a clear-eyed assessment of what the state actually has. His plan to make Oyo State the California of Africa begins from a simple observation: no state in the South-West of Nigeria has a richer endowment of human capital. Oyo State is home to some of Nigeria’s oldest and most distinguished universities. It has produced engineers, scientists, artists, writers, lawyers, and technocrats in numbers that few states can match. The University of Ibadan is Nigeria’s premier university. The First Technical University is growing its footprint in applied science and technology. The state’s secondary school system, built on the foundation of the old Western Region, remains one of the strongest in the country.
California became the world’s innovation capital not primarily because of its geography but because of its deliberate investment in human beings and the environment that allowed them to create. Silicon Valley did not emerge from a government programme. It emerged from a governance philosophy: support the university, connect it to industry, create the regulatory environment that allows ideas to become companies, and then get out of the way. Chief Ilaka’s vision applies this logic to Oyo State’s abundant intellectual resources. The talent is already there. What has been missing is a governor with the vision to see it and the competence to organize government around it.
A government under Chief Ilaka would leverage the state’s human capital as its primary development asset, building the infrastructure of innovation around its universities and technical institutions, attracting technology investment to a state that can supply the engineers, the coders, the agricultural scientists, and the entrepreneurs that those investments require. Oyo State does not need to import talent. It needs a governor who understands that the talent it already has is its most valuable natural resource, and who has the governing vision to build a state economy around it.
VII. The Verdict of Fairness
The 2027 Oyo State governorship election is not merely another electoral contest. It is a referendum on the state’s idea of itself. Does Oyo State believe that democracy means fair access to power for all its geopolitical zones, or does it accept that one city’s political class will determine every governor for as long as it can maintain its dominance? Does it honour the warrior heritage of its Oyo forebears by ensuring that the descendants of that great empire are not forever spectators in the governance of the state that bears their name? Or does it ask them, once again, to be patient?
The answer that equity and democratic fairness demand is clear. After 26 years in which Ibadan has governed Oyo State for more than four of every five years, the time has come for a different story. Not a story of bitterness or rejection of Ibadan, which is a great city with a proud contribution to this state’s history. But a story of inclusion, of a state that looks at all its peoples and says: you belong here too, and your turn has come.
That story needs a candidate who can tell it with credibility. Chief Bisi Ilaka, grounded in Oyo’s traditions, tested in its politics, clear in his vision, and unimpeachable in his character, is that candidate. Oyo State has the talent to be the California of Africa. It now needs the leadership to match. In 2027, the governorship must leave Ibadan. And when it does, it must go to the right hands.
Abimbola Adekunle writes from Ibadan.
