By Segun Olatunji
Ah, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) never ceases to amazingly entertain the good people of Ogun State. Just when you think their ‘political relevance’ has safely expired, they pull a rabbit out of a hat—or, in this case, a heavily recycled essay out of a time capsule. Enter ex-finance commissioner, Kehinde Sogunle and his grand manifesto, “Reclaiming Ogun State’s Sovereign Blueprint: The PDP template.” It is an exquisite piece of historical fiction. Reading it feels like being aggressively scolded by a museum curator who is deeply upset that someone wants to replace a broken, horse-drawn carriage with a bullet train. Apparently, in the PDP’s world, progress is a dirty word and moving forward is a structural sin.
The core grievance of Sogunle’s treatise is as hilarious as it is predictable. He is absolutely terrified of the All Progressives Congress governorship candidate, Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola, popularly called Yayi, and his high-octane “ITESIWAJU” campaign. Sogunle laments that Yayi’s platform treats Ogun State like an “administrative backwater requiring an imported governance model to achieve modernisation”. Heaven forbid! Imagine wanting to import high tax revenues, structured infrastructure development and corporate investment into the Gateway State. The horror!
What makes Sogunle’s critique truly delicious, however, is the author’s own resume. He writes with the lofty authority of a grand economic architect, conveniently hoping we all forget his time as Ogun State’s former commissioner for finance under the PDP. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we are being lectured on fiscal sovereignty by a man who steered the state’s chequebook during an era when financial masterclasses consisted of racking up debts, struggling to pay basic overheads, and treating internally generated revenue like a rare, endangered species. Watching a former PDP finance chief critique Senator Yayi—a seasoned chartered accountant and the current Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee—on economic management is like a backyard bicycle “repairer” struggling to explain aerodynamics to a rocket scientist.
Sogunle claims Yayi’s pitch relies entirely on “historical amnesia” because the structural blueprint of Lagos post-1999 was actually “conceived, drafted, and operationalised by a core of cerebral technocrats—chief among them distinguished sons and daughters of Ogun State”. Let us pause and appreciate the sheer intellectual gymnastics on display here. If Ogun’s brightest minds had to cross the bridge into Lagos to build a hyper-efficient powerhouse, doesn’t that prove the point? They needed a functional platform to execute their ideas! For decades, the political machinery back home in Ogun—managed by finance commissioners like Sogunle—was far too busy mismanaging internal crises to give them that space. The “Lagos Template” isn’t an alien invasion; it is simply what happens when you give competence an actual budget, a goal and a modern balance sheet.
Sogunle boasts, “We built the original engine…. We hold the source code”. If the PDP holds the “source code,” why does the software keep crashing? Anyway, look no further than the party’s perpetual governorship candidate, Hon. Ladi Adebutu. If this is the “source code,” it’s riddled with malware. When Ladi Adebutu isn’t busy trying to explain away the spectacular, multi-coloured circus of his electoral outings, he is busy redefining “grassroots empowerment.” Who needs sustainable infrastructure when you can just try to run the government on a Point-of-Sale (POS) terminal or better still, on a Baba Ijebu 2Sure ticket?
The PDP blueprint apparently involves bypassing actual development plans in favour of distributing pre-loaded ATM cards to voters like an overly generous, highly suspicious, corporate Father Christmas. Perhaps this is the new fiscal policy Sogunle is endorsing: trying to buy a state’s sovereignty for N10,000 per swipe. It’s the ultimate “swipe-and-hope” governance model. If your card gets swallowed by the machine, or if the court freezes the account due to vote-buying investigations, does the entire sovereign blueprint just display a “Transaction Declined” error?
Sogunle promises “structural liberation… and enduring institutional comfort” through Adebutu’s “ITURA DE blueprint”. But while the PDP’s standard-bearers are entirely distracted by internal warfare, legal hot water and card-shuffling games, Senator Yayi is delivering a developmental blitzkrieg that cannot fit onto a plastic card stripe. Yayi isn’t giving out 4-digit PINs; he is giving out real, physical keys to transformed communities.
More importantly, Yayi is systematically dismantling the single biggest political anomaly in the history of the Gateway State: the Ogun West 50-year-old governorship jinx. For five decades, the Yewa-Awori people of Ogun West have been treated by the PDP elite as a perpetual political bridesmaid—good for harvesting votes during elections, but entirely disposable when it comes to occupying the top seat at the Oke-Mosan Governor’s Office. Sogunle’s “sovereign blueprint” remarkably forgets that under the PDP’s previous reigns, Ogun West was kept in a state of deliberate underdevelopment, its aspirations weaponised and then parked in the garage once power was secured.
Yayi has completely flipped the script. By matching an unprecedented developmental scorecard with an elite, pan-Ogun alliance, he has turned Ogun West from a political afterthought into the unstoppable epicentre of the state’s political future. The PDP thrives on the status quo of marginalisation, which is exactly why Yayi’s momentum induces such panic in their ranks. He isn’t just running a campaign; he is breaking a generational glass ceiling that the PDP spent years reinforcing with concrete.
Let’s talk about actual projects, shall we? While Adebutu’s team plays with debit limits, Yayi is dealing in mega-scale infrastructure as the Senate Appropriations Chairman. We are talking about the massive construction and asphalting of key transport arteries like the Ota-Itele Road, the Lusada-Alapoti Road, and the Ilara-Ilashe Road, which weave through 26 border communities. When Yayi addresses the economy, he doesn’t hand out short-term cash; he builds structures like the Koko Ultramodern Market in Ipokia, the Pahayi Market in Ilaro, and the sprawling modern market complexes in Atan, Ijoko, and Imeko.
For the tech-savvy youths who wouldn’t be caught dead waiting in a rigged ATM line, Yayi has constructed state-of-the-art ICT centres, including the one at Muslim Progressive High School in Oke-Odan. For rural development, his office has facilitated over 167 electrical transformers and launched dedicated power infrastructure overhauls—like the massive reactivation of the Ilaro-Ibese and Isaga 33KV overhead lines—to pull local businesses out of prolonged darkness. Add to this the construction of specialised Intensive Care Units (ICUs) at the State Hospitals in Ilaro and Ota, alongside primary healthcare hubs in Moriwi, Atapele, and Iyesi, and you see a leader building a fortress of governance.
It is delightful to note that while the opposition fights over an expired source code and ATM gimmicks, Senator Yayi’s developmental blitzkrieg is breaking historic jinxes and rewriting Ogun’s future in concrete and steel.
The irony of Sogunle’s article is that it completely misunderstands what the electorate actually wants. The good people of Ogun State are neither looking for an academic debate on 1999 transition sub-committees, nor waiting for a political rebate that bounces at the terminal. They want continuity, development and progress. Yayi’s Nine-Pillar Agenda explicitly seeks to sustain and build upon the infrastructural gains of Governor Dapo Abiodun. It is about creating a seamless transition that multiplies prosperity, rather than the old PDP tradition of abandoning projects out of spite or throwing money at problems and hoping no one notices the math doesn’t add up.
So, let the nostalgia merchants keep drafting their beautifully anxious eulogies for a “sovereign blueprint” that only ever existed on paper. While Kehinde Sogunle stares into the rearview mirror, trying to retroactively balance books he couldn’t balance a decade ago, and while Ladi Adebutu roams the nooks and crannies of Ogun State looking for an ATM terminal that won’t reject his ambition, the train has already left the station. Senator Yayi isn’t asking for the PDP’s dusty “source code”; he is already rewriting the state’s future in concrete, steel and unprecedented development. The debate is officially over, the jinx is shattered and the PDP can keep the change—assuming their pre-loaded ATM cards don’t get declined first.
. Olatunji, a Journalist, Political/Crisis Communication Strategist, writes from Ilaro, Ogun State
