“In that bolekaja piece, Author Wilanpa, assuming that this is his real name, sets out to condemn and demonise the Ogun State governor, Prince Dapo Abiodun and his administration and ingratiate himself to the governor of Oyo State, Mr ‘Seyi Makinde.”
If you are not familiar with Ogun State and its governance under Prince Dapo Abiodun, chances are that you can take Olujide Wilanpa’s acerbic piece, “A Tale Of Two Governors“, published in the February 18, 2025 edition of an online platform, Newscoven.com, at face value.
In that bolekaja piece, Author Wilanpa, assuming that this is his real name, sets out to condemn and demonise the Ogun State governor, Prince Dapo Abiodun and his administration and ingratiate himself to the governor of Oyo State, Mr ‘Seyi Makinde.
To be sure, if all that Wilanpa set out to do was to eulogise Governor Makinde, there would have been nothing wrong with that. He has the right to believe either that the Oyo governor is the best in the South-West or indeed the entire country. It would be insulting, given the monumental achievements that have trailed his occupancy of the Oke Mosan Government House in the last five years, to think that the Ogun State helmsman is, or can be, diminished by such statements.
However, while pretending to write about Makinde, Wilanpa’s real aim is to put down the Ogun governor using blatant falsehood, false equivalences, and innuendo. This is an open challenge: let anyone, ANYONE at all, prove through statistical evidence that Ogun is behind any state in Nigeria except Lagos, the country’s economic capital. Use submissions by the statistical agencies, local or international, to prove that Ogun State under Abiodun is an economically or even infrastructurally-backward state. There is a reason the Gateway State is Nigeria’s top investment destination after Lagos. Ogun under Abiodun is one of the few states that can pay salaries without federal allocation. The IGR has more than tripled under him.
With unimpeachable evidence, I show below that “A Tale Of Two Governors” is just another “tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.” In that ridiculously uninformed and patently cancerous piece, the author submits as follows: “A drive on that arterial road always showed that the Oyo State stretch of the road is well-policed by security agencies and Amotekun Corps, while the Ogun State stretch is not. You can draw your conclusions or ask those who ply Lagos-Ibadan express where they feel safer.” Ah! How people ridicule themselves through sheer buffoonery!
The axis that Mr Wilanpa dismisses in his haste to demonise Abiodun just saved the South-West geopolitical zone from terrorist attacks! Just last Saturday, the Ogun State Commissioner of Police, Lanre Ogunlowo, intercepted a group of youths numbering 20 and possessing dangerous weapons during his routine weekend patrol along the Eledumare, Bamboo, Fidiwo, Foursquare, Alapako and the Onigari axis on the Ogun-Oyo border. The weapons recovered from the suspects included “daggers, knives, cutlasses and objects suspected to be charms, among others.”
If the Ogun axis of the Lagos/Oyo section of the Lagos-Ibadan expressway is not well policed, how then was this potentially life and civilization-saving operation made possible? It is, indeed, a tragedy that Wilanpa can claim that Ogun State, a state described by no less a personality than the Inspector General of Police as one of the safest and most peaceful states in the country, is toying with security.
Only last month, the Abiodun government recruited 690 Amotekun personnel, even as the governor gave approval for the recruitment of an additional 1000, declaring that the state is a no-go- area for criminals. This was during the passing out parade ceremony of the 690 trainees, Batch D of the Corps held at the Gateway International Stadium, Sagamu.
Hear him on the occasion: “We will continue to strengthen the Ogun State Security Network Agency (Amotekun Corps) to ensure that you have the tools and Infrastructure required to perform your duties effectively and diligently. I am today, based on what I have seen by the level of your preparedness and commitment, approving the recruitment of another 1000 Amotekun Corps. This will bring the total strength to over 2000. They will, of course, be renumerated very well, in line with the civil service structure. I will also be approving additional logistics, including but not limited to vehicles, electric motorcycles and all that is required to allow you to discharge your responsibilities to the best of your abilities.”
As the governor has stated, Ogun State’s geographical location as the gateway to other parts of the country poses a security challenge. But his government is determined to keep it safe and prosperous.
The writer claims he is not “trying to fan the embers of discord between the two governors, who are friends or, at best, brothers,” yet he declares with a bold face that the Ogun people would gladly swap their governor with the Oyo governor. Apart from being so disrespectful to the good people of Ogun State who rewarded their governor with a second term in 2023, this statement suggests that the people were not intelligent in their choice of governor.
The problem with hack and hired writers is the poverty of morals, the absence of conscience, the use of talent in pursuit of pecuniary gains. The governor who built the Ogun State Agro-Cargo International Airport, which will begin scheduled and non-scheduled flights in the next few weeks and will generate 25,000 jobs, has turned his state into a giant construction site since being sworn-in as the fifth democratically-elected governor in 2019.
It is ridiculous that the writer can say that the Ogun helmsman is not recruiting new teachers, and yet claim to be resident in Ogun State. Only recently, Governor Abiodun announced his administration’s plan to recruit 2,000 more teachers in 2025 under the Ogun Teach Initiative, thus increasing the number of interns from 4,000 to 6,000 and helping to bridge the gap in the state’s student-to-teacher ratio. That was not all:
Abiodun noted that his administration, in line with current realities, had increased the wages of the Ogun Teach interns in the state to ₦80,000. In any case, just as Wilanpa was publishing his moronic piece, newspapers across the country carried a great piece of news: “Ogun To Get Uninterrupted Electricity As Abiodun Commissions Power Plant In Eight Weeks Time.” If an Independent Power Plant that will provide 24 hours uninterrupted electricity to most parts of the state, especially Abeokuta, the state capital, will be inaugurated in the next two months, then how can it be doubted that the Ogun State governor, one of the first governors to announce a new minimum in the country following the recent legislation by the National Assembly, is conscious of his place in history?
The 30-megawatts power plant located at Onijogangan near Ewekoro, is the first phase of Ogun State Light Up Project, run in collaboration with private sector partners. According to Governor Abiodun: “Abeokuta Metropolis will require more than 30 megawatts but this is the first phase of the planned 100 megawatts power generation capacity. I have gone round and have taken note of progress of work so far.
“I have seen the control room, I have seen the turbines, I have seen that will be responsible for ensuring that the gas is compressed. We have seen the gas pipelines that will be completed between three to six weeks. The gas compressor is there, and there is a diesel tank as well. I am quite excited and I am sure that by the grace of God in the next eight weeks, you will be here with me to commission this plant to the glory of God and the use of those who live in Abeokuta.”
We know that Wilanpa will found it hard to admit that while Ogun is about to commission a 30-megawatts power plant, the state he chose to eulogise is just working on an 11-megawatts plant out of which it has only completed five megawatts after four years.
In his haste to ingratiate himself to the Oyo State governor, Wilanpa claimed that Governor Abiodun’s palliative strategy after subsidy removal was to “give ₦10,000 or ₦20,000 peanuts.” God have mercy!
Following subsidy removal, Governor Abiodun announced a ₦5 billion-intervention fund covering education, health, workers’ deductions and food palliative to cushion the corollaries of the rising cost of living and inflation. He provided a minimum of five exercise books for each of the 850,000 students in Ogun public primary and secondary schools, one-time ₦10,000 education support grant for, at least, 100,000 pupils in public primary and secondary schools in the state, an education grant of ₦50,000 each for all the 27,600 indigent students in tertiary institutions nationwide, insurance health cover for over 70,000 beneficiaries; free pre-natal care, an additional ₦5,000 per birth and free post-natal care in state hospitals and primary health care centres, and food palliatives for about 300,000 households across the state. Abiodun announced immediate payment of ₦10,000 to workers in Ogun State and the reduction of working days.
Before then, he had rolled out a gas-powered public transport system, with the state’s wifi-enabled buses converted from PMS to gas-powered vehicles, saying that public buses would cost much less if they were CNG rather than PMS-powered. That was not all: the governor and his team launched electric motorbikes and tricycles all over the state.
As a matter of fact, many states, including Oyo, approached Ogun for CNG conversion of their public buses. It will interest Wilanpa to note that Ogun State also trained women of Oyo State on the Nigeria for Women Project.
Local mechanics, a vital part of the conversion engineering, were trained, while conversion stations were set up in senatorial districts, allowing for the rapid conversion of commercial and public mass transit buses and vehicles across the state. The initiative provided training and job opportunities for thousands of technicians and mechanics around the state. Some of the buses were given to workers and students, while some plied the Mowe-Ibafo to Berger in Lagos and Redeemed axis to Lagos Island, a heavily congested corridor.
The government engaged in bulk purchase of food and sold it at controlled prices, paid hazard allowance to health and medical personnel and peculiar allowance for public servants, paid leave bonuses to public servants and gave immediate cash-backing for the quarterly payment of gratuities to pensioners; distributed food palliatives to vulnerable citizens while mandating the Gateway Trading Company to establish food distribution outlets across the state and sell the items at the rates obtainable in the market before the removal of fuel subsidy.
Wilanpa and his gang came a thousand years too late. Dapo Abiodun is governor of governors.
•Branco submits this piece via funmibranco@aol.com
