By Segun Olatunji
Barely seven months to the 2027 general elections, Ogun State’s political theatre has officially descended into a frantic circus with the Peoples Democratic Party’s governorship candidate, Ladi Adebutu donning the ringmaster’s hat. With the governorship election in Ogun State still hundreds of kilometres away, the Ladi Adebutu Democratic Organisation (LADO) has hysterically thrown itself into desperate tantrums and premature offensives against the more popular All Progressives Congress’ consensus governorship candidate, Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola Yayi. But not being able to match Yayi’s towering political clout, infrastructure projects’ delivery and grassroots machinery, LADO’s principal, Adebutu and his team decided to settle for a simpler but more exhausting strategy of throwing mud at a 100-storey building while fervently praying and speaking in tongues they stick and smear. Theirs is a pathetic masterclass in political envy – a proof that when you lack a viable personal vision, the only option left is to obsess over and harangue your rival.
Let’s take a peep and amuse ourselves a little at the sheer, unadulterated comedy of Adebutu’s eternal obsession. While every serious politician is building actual structures, delivering good governance and building strategic alliances, the “akebaje” Iperu billionaire’s heir is playing a hilarious political 4D “ayo olopon” game in his own world of permanent delusion. Adebutu’s current, breathtaking strategy is a relentless, exhausting and borderline hysterical smear campaign to convince Ogun State electorate that Senator Yayi is the greatest threat to the people of the over 50-year-old state since the Nigerian civil war. Whereas, while Adebutu’s team fritters away scarce resources spewing bile in the studios of some radio station and printing anger-filled pamphlets, Senator Yayi is busy reshaping the physical landscape of Ogun State. Infact, the stark contrast between the camps of both men is embarrassing. While Adebutu’s campaign team is obsessed with endless media faux pas, Senator Yayi is making more tangible footprints midwifing national budgets as Chairman of the Senate Appropriation Committee, and successfully delivering the 2024, 2025 and 2026 Appropriation Acts. Also, while Adebutu’s team is uttering xenophobic bunkums to question their rival’s ancestral roots, Senator Yayi is legislating educational growth through active bills such as the establishment of the Federal College of Geological and Cement Studies in Iselu, Yewa North and the upgrading of the Federal Polytechnic Ilaro to a full-fledged Federal University of Technology.
Furthermore, while Adebutu is hosting angry proxy meetings across splinter groups, Senator Yayi is inaugurating 53 mega-projects across Ogun State’s three senatorial districts to mark the three-year anniversary of his election to represent Ogun West Senatorial District in the National Assembly. While Adebutu and his team are banking on vague promises and dwelling on old family legacies, Yayi is making concrete educational overhauls, including the construction of a state-of-the-art 18-classroom block at Mayigi Community High School, Ilashe and massive facilities at Yewa College, Ilaro. As the PDP flagbearer and his team are raising their voices from the sidelines about alleged regional favouritism, the APC governorship hopeful is implementing massive grassroots empowerment, including scholarship funds for over 5,000 student-beneficiaries from across the three senatorial districts of Ogun State, distribution of thousands of laptops and funding mini-grid solar installations for local hospitals and health centres.
Adebutu’s kind of politics is really a pathetic sight to behold, as it’s often highly entertaining, bringing back fond memories of the comedic dramas of the Jesters International of those days on national television, featuring the trio of legendary ace comedians – Jacob, Papalolo and Aderupoko. His confidence is almost inspiring, being a man whose primary political legacy is a glittering collection of silver medals, Supreme Court dismissals and concession speeches. Yet, he has continued to throw all caution to the wind. The entire Ladi Adebutu Campaign Organisation (LADO) has transformed itself into a full time “Yayi-watching” club. The conductor of this orchestra of wailers is LADO’s media team alongside other Ogun PDP cheerleaders.
Day in, day out, his Goebbelsian media team churn out hysterical press releases and stage desperate press conferences for the sole purpose of battering Yayi’s shadow. It takes a unique level of insecurity to anchor an entire political structure on the activities of a single opponent. Rather than offering concrete solutions to Ogun State’s existential problems, Adebutu’s media lackeys have become obsessed with throwing tantrums, turning what should be a policy debate into a bitter, personalised vendetta. His tactical desperation is exemplified via his media machinery under LADO. Rather than regaling his supporters with complex policy debates on the economy and infrastructure, issues Adebutu himself routinely shies away from, his media aides recently hit the airwaves in Ilese-Ijebu, introducing their “revolutionary political ideology” of “geographical DNA testing.”
Adebutu, through his strident megaphones, boldly declared Senator Yayi “atohunrinwa” and “tekobo” – total stranger and an outsider from Lagos lacking a proper Ogun State birthright. This is nothing but a hilarious, paper-thin argument, if one completely ignores the fact that Yayi is literally the incumbent Senator representing Ogun West in the National Assembly.
However, the bottom was completely knocked out of this Adebutu’s boring spurious claim with Senator Yayi’s recent mammoth-crowded homecoming and razzmatazzed reception by his Kemta maternal kinsmen in Abeokuta, a strong confirmation of his Egba roots and endorsement of his 2027 governorship bid by Egbaland’s paramount ruler, Alake, leaving the enemies of the APC governorship flagbearer high and dry, and even in the lurch – they’re now stranded and shaking like a non-plussed chicken soaked to the skin under torrential rain.
Less than 48 hours after Yayi’s triumphal reception by the people of Egbaland, the PDP governorship candidate, Adebutu, scampered frantically, with his tail between his legs, to former President Olusegun Obasanjo at his OOPL penthouse in Abeokuta to get his own version of the “Egba blessings and endorsement” for his 2027 governorship ambition. The former president himself, sounding like a broken record and very much unlike the statesman he’s supposed to be, reportedly said during the PDP governorship candidate’s visit that Lagos must not be allowed to become a liability to Ogun State in the 2027 elections, apparently making a mischievous and derogatory veiled reference to the Yayi Tsunami currently sweeping across Ogun State, in line with the Adebutu team’s “DNA- testing politics.” Whatever magic the PDP candidate thinks Baba’s “blessings” can do for him in the 2027 governorship election in Ogun remains a conjecture in the realm of mirage.
Adebutu’s current attitude is akin to that of a man fruitlessly trying to fetch water with a basket, completely oblivious of the fact that the stranger might temporarily have the upper hand, but the land belongs to the one with his roots deeply entrenched in it. And right now, Yayi’s roots, as a true son of the soil in both Yewaland and Egbaland, are so deep to sustain a thick forest of iroko trees. However, one must admire Adebutu’s dedication to xenophobic geography over actual governance. When you lack a track record of victories and successes, tracking family trees and ferreting for ancestry becomes your next best game.
Adebutu’s frantic, premature assault on Yayi is a spectacular display of political panic. Mobilising splinter political groups and expending resources, goodwill and media capital several months before the first ballot is cast, shows a camp aware it’s already losing ground. While the PDP governorship candidate’s handlers spin this aggressive noise as a “strategic opposition”, the Ogun electorate sees it for what it really is: a loud, desperate cry for relevance from a camp that has run out of ideas before the 2027 governorship race has officially begun.
The most hilarious consequence of Adebutu’s aggressive smear campaign is how it constantly elevates Yayi, his target. Each time LADO launches a coordinated attack to discredit Yayi, they inadvertently remind the Ogun electorate of the Senator’s colossal influence and giant footprints. By compelling his media team to make everything about Yayi a news item, Adebutu has essentially turned his spokespersons into unpaid PR managers for his political rival. He ensures Yayi stays firmly in the spotlight as the standard bearer of Ogun politics, while his own PDP looks less like a bitter commentator wailing from the sidelines.
However, one cannot talk about the PDP flagbearer’s “strenuous efforts” without taking a shot at his historic 2023 legal performance, which presented an ATM card masterclass in voter relations. While most other candidates used flyers and manifestos to attract the electorate, Adebutu – the perpetual financial innovator – decided to go many underhand steps further. But caught with his hand in the jar, the Federal authorities arraigned him for allegedly preloading N10,000 into 200,000 Zenith Bank Verve cards to surreptitiously buy votes during the 2023 general elections. This became the ultimate “gbe bodi” (carry body) move – a desperate attempt to outsmart the system with deft financial footwork. Of course, for him, nothing shows your love for the masses better than an unregistered endowment scheme named after your mama, fully loaded and ready to swipe at the polling booth! There are already fillers that the PDP governorship candidate is mapping out a similar strategy for the 2027 governorship election in Ogun State. God forbid he succeeds!
In 2023 when police launched a probe, Adebutu exhibited his legendary bravery by taking the next flight out of the country for “medical purposes,” abandoning his co-defendants to bear all the brunt. Contrary to a popular saying, the PDP flagbearer literally vanished into thin air when it’s time to account for the “shared meat.”
More amusing was Adebutu’s desperate attempt to stop the trial completely. Despite his lawyers’ disingenuous application of all the tricks in their ultimate political pocketbook, the court vehemently dismissed his applications, ruling that his criminal trial for conspiracy, bribery and undue influence must proceed. It takes a truly unique breed of delusion like that of Adebutu’s to threaten a performing incumbent lawmaker when your own calendar is replete and booked solid with fraud and money laundering cases still in courts. Despite Adebutu’s loudmouth, his legal books are in tatters.
Adebutu’s comedic genius hit a fever pitch following some high-stakes horse-trading. After Senator Yayi officially emerged the Ogun APC consensus governorship candidate, Adebutu threw a textbook political tantrum. In a matter of a few weeks, he surfaced with his own version of “consensus candidacy” under the tattered umbrella of the fractured PDP. This brings one to the absolute hilarity of Adebutu’s standing at the national level. The Ogun PDP flagbearer boasts about conquering his state, yet he can barely get a reply to his text from the Wadata Plaza, Abuja National Headquarters of his party. The fact is that the PDP national leadership treats Adebutu like an awkward “we-just-dey-here” politician – nodding politely to all his antics like an Agama lizard, while in reality it is completely ignoring him.
While the PDP governorship candidate is out here grandstanding as the grand commander of the opposition parties in Ogun State, his party’s National Working Committee is too obsessed with dealing with its own internal structural implosions to care about this perpetual governorship flagbearer’s endless tantrums in the media. Adebutu is essentially running a one-man show, fueled by his own ultimate political pocketbook, while the PDP national leadership sees him less as a strategic asset and more as a serial liability, who constantly brings bad press to the party. Adebutu has become a self-declared general commanding troops that are currently ghosting his orders.
In all honesty, Adebutu treats governorship races the way people treat Leap Years – a process to partake in every four years just to remind the electorate he’s always in the race, only to suffer the usual defeat, get dragged through the courts and eventually disappear; only to return to enjoying the comfort of daddy’s stupendous wealth. He’s a classic serial loser – all noise, heavy financial deployment and spending, but zero political return at the end of it all!
No wonder Adebutu’s 2024 running mate, Adekunle Akinlade, recently described his defeat as a “calamity averted” for Ogun State. This perpetual PDP governorship candidate pretends not to know that when your own shadow can no longer stand your leadership, then it’s about time you took your seat. Every of Adebutu’s efforts to swallow Yayi’s political machinery has only left him with broken teeth.
Adebutu is currently fighting the Yayi tides in Ogun with a tiny plastic spoon. This is where one has to admire the sheer, ridiculous bravery of the PDP governorship candidate trying to discredit a political rival who treats regional representation like a highly funded enterprise. While Senator Yayi, who doubles as the APC governorship flagbearer for 2027, is busy pulling all the strings to consolidate his candidacy in all the 20 local governments of the state, distributing tractors and funding mega-scholarships, Adebutu remains completely unperturbed, priding himself on nothing but pure vibes and daddy’s stupendous wealth.
With his power of unyielding stubbornness, Adebutu cares less about actual grassroots alignment. He’s in actual fact going headlong into another historic loss, but this time he’s doing so with style and a perfectly formatted media propaganda. Contrary to the old saying that you don’t claim to know the road better than the custodian of the land, Adebutu believes he can navigate Ogun politics better than the more popular grassroots heavyweights like Senator Adeola Yayi. But in reality, the Ogun PDP governorship candidate is merely taking a luxury ride straight into a bottomless political ditch. His case is the classic tale of David and Goliath, except that his own David keeps throwing his stones backward, knocking out members of his own team and simply handing the trophy to Goliath.
As Ogun inches towards the 2027 governorship election, may Adebutu’s team never run out of propaganda and may his lawyers, too, never be short of excuses. The voters have taken their stand! Ogun State people are only watching, and laughing at the unfolding drama.
Yayi ni jo, Yayi ni jare!
Olatunji, a journalist, political/crisis communication strategist, writes from Ilaro, Ogun State
