Strictly between Adebutu and Yayi

THERE is something revealing about a political campaign that begins by rummaging through family trees. It often suggests that the campaign has run short of more consequential things to say. As Ogun moves towards the 2027 governorship election, the context is strictly between Oladipupo Adebutu of the only visible candidate of the People’s Democratic Party in the country and his arch-rival, Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola, popularly known as Yayi. All the other 11 candidates on the ballot fit the characterisation of Rufai Oseni of the PDP presidential candidate. And they know because no upset can happen there.

However, the debate over who clinches the Oke Mosan Government House seat increasingly acquired the curious complexion of a genealogical inquest, which is unedifying for our primus-inter-pares State, Ogun. Asking where exactly his father was from, what of his mother? Is he from Ogun West, Abeokuta, Epe or Ekiti? Which ancestral branch should be admitted into Ogun’s political family tree? These questions may sustain animated conversations in political circles, but they cannot substitute for the fundamental questions an election ought to provoke. What has the candidate done with the opportunities he has had? What does he understand about Ogun’s problems? What is his programme for the state? Who has demonstrated the capacity to translate political ambition into public value? Those are the questions that should define 2027.

There is, of course, a constitutional dimension to the question of origin. Section 177 of the 1999 Constitution requires a candidate for governor to be, among other things, an indigene of the state. But precisely because the matter has a constitutional dimension, it should be approached with the seriousness of law and evidence, not the looseness of political rumour. If the opposition believes Yayi is not an indigene of Ogun, it should produce the evidence. Where, precisely, in Ekiti? Where, precisely, in Epe? Which family? Which community? Which traditional authority? Which credible genealogical record? A claim does not become fact merely because it is repeated often enough. Ogun’s political history should make the opposition even more cautious about turning ancestry into the principal battlefield. Chief Olusegun Osoba was once derided as an “Osogbo man”, yet the journalist from outside the narrow boundaries of Ogun ancestry became one of the state’s most consequential political figures. Otunba Gbenga Daniel was subjected to arguments about his Delta connections and his being Itsekiri, yet he governed Ogun for eight years and left an unmistakable imprint on its political landscape. Senator Ibikunle Amosun, too, endured the caricature of an outsider. Whatever one’s assessment of his administration, however, nobody can seriously discuss contemporary Ogun politics without acknowledging the scale of his infrastructural intervention.

The lesson is not that ancestry is meaningless. It is that ancestry, once legitimately established, cannot by itself be a substitute for competence. The Yoruba have a useful injunction: ibi tí a bá ń lọ là ń wo, kì í ṣe ibi tí a ti ń bọ – it is where we are going that deserves our attention, not merely where we are coming from. Politics is ultimately an argument about the future. This is where Yayi should welcome scrutiny rather than fear it. If he wants to govern Ogun, his strongest case should not be the location of his father’s grave or the genealogy of his mother’s family. We have gone past that. Representing Ogun at the highest law-making body in the country has sufficiently laid that to rest by law. By tradition, the pronouncements of his son-of-the-soil status by both the Alake of Egbaland and the Olu of Yewaland put to bed speculations, and these should suffice.

His strongest case, to me, should be his public service record. His legislative career, constituency interventions, education initiatives, healthcare interventions, empowerment programmes and infrastructure-related projects should all be placed before the electorate and examined dispassionately. What was promised? What was delivered? Where? With what measurable effect? If the record is inadequate, his opponents should say so. If it is substantial, they should challenge it with a better record. Indeed, the opposition has a better weapon available to it than ancestry: performance. Ladi Adebutu is not a political novice who needs to manufacture credentials. He has legislative experience, having served in the National Assembly in the present republic and previously been among the young legislators of the aborted Third Republic. That gives him a record to defend and, potentially, an advantage to exploit. If he believes his legislative interventions were more consequential than Yayi’s, he should bring the receipts. If he believes he understands Ogun’s economy better, he should tell the electorate how he will transform it. If his programme for education, healthcare, agriculture, industrialisation, employment and infrastructure is superior, he should place it on the table and invite comparison. That would be politics.

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There is little strategic wisdom in a challenger choosing to fight an opponent on the terrain of rumour when he can fight him on the terrain of evidence. If Yayi’s strength is his legislative record, interrogate it. If his claim is that his constituency interventions have changed lives, verify them. If he boasts of roads, schools, healthcare or empowerment, inspect them. If he claims to have built a political network beyond Ogun West, test its depth. If Adebutu or any other aspirant believes he has done better, let the electorate see the evidence. Democracy becomes meaningful when competing claims can be tested against competing records. The danger of the ancestry campaign is that it may become a convenient distraction from a more uncomfortable question: what does the opposition itself bring to the table? Ogun voters are entitled to ask not simply where Yayi comes from but what his opponents have done with the opportunities they have had. They should ask what each aspirant did when he occupied public office, whom his decisions benefited, what institutions he strengthened and what enduring legacy he left behind. The man seeking the governorship is asking for considerably greater power than the office he previously occupied. The electorate is therefore entitled to demand a commensurately greater account of his past.

This is why the emerging contest should not be reduced to APC versus PDP. Party structures will matter, endorsements will matter, money will matter and political alliances will matter, but none of these should relieve the candidates of the obligation to explain what they intend to do with the mandate they seek. Ogun is too educated, too industrialised and too politically sophisticated to be reduced to a quarrel over family trees.

The state has roads that need attention, schools that require investment, hospitals that need equipment and personnel, young people who need opportunities, farmers who need access to markets and capital, and an industrial base whose economic potential has yet to be fully translated into broad prosperity. These problems will not be solved by establishing whether a politician’s great-grandfather crossed a particular boundary. They require policy, competence, discipline and the ability to execute.

A politician’s ancestry may tell us where he comes from. It tells us very little about what he will do with power. That is why the candidates should bring their receipts. Let Yayi account for his years in public office. Let Adebutu account for his. Let every other aspirant do the same. Let them explain what they achieved, what they learnt, what they would do differently and why Ogun should entrust them with its future. Let the debates be about jobs, infrastructure, education, healthcare, housing, agriculture, industrialisation, security, urban development and the state’s capacity to convert its enormous economic advantages into a better quality of life for its people.

The Yoruba proverb, ìwà l’ẹwà – character is beauty – offers a useful political philosophy here. In public life, one might extend it: performance is pedigree. A politician’s most persuasive genealogy is the trail of public value he leaves behind: the road that works, the school that functions, the hospital that saves lives, the young person empowered, the legislation that makes a difference and the community whose prospects have been altered for the better.

If the opposition believes Yayi is unfit, it should make the case. If Adebutu believes he is better, he should prove it. If another candidate believes both are inadequate, he should bring his own evidence. But Ogun should not be invited to choose between competing family trees when it can choose between competing records.

The 2027 election should therefore be a referendum not on genealogical purity but on political capacity. Origin can establish belonging; it cannot establish competence. Surnames can tell us where a family has been; they cannot tell us where a government will take a state.

The electorate deserves better than tales by moonlight. It deserves evidence, ideas and a contest of records. In the final reckoning, political pedigree is not inherited. It is earned. And the most credible inheritance any politician can leave Ogun is not a surname, but a record.

•Dr Somorin writes from Crescent University, Abeokuta