By Wale Ojo-Lanre, Esq.
That I am not an indigene of Osun State does not invalidate my opinion.
So before any Omisore adherent, devotee, or die-hard follower begins to unsheathe their verbal daggers, let me establish this: I speak not from bias, but from patriotic concern.
I am a Nigerian — and beyond that, a statesman — with emotional, political, and cultural investments in Osun. To shock the cynics, I am also an adopted son of the late Timi Agbale, Oba Laoye, nurtured in his palace at Ede. Thus, I reserve every moral and sentimental right to speak about who governs the land of my second birth.
Now, let us address the pressing question: Is Ajani — the one you fondly call Otunba or Prince Iyiola Omisore — truly fit to contest the gubernatorial election in Osun State?
Let truth be told. Let dignity wear its Sunday best. Let facts march naked in the market square.
This is no ordinary political commentary. It is a lamentation on The Audacity of Ambition — an audacity that dares to subject Osun State to the danger of competence.
Let the heavens be silent. Let the trumpets be muted. Let the elders of the ruling party summon their most gifted high priest of consensus, for we must urgently plead with Otunba Iyiola Ajani Omisore to desist from contaminating the familiar, comfortable waters of Osun politics with his inconvenient competence.
His presence is not merely a political disruption — it is an existential danger to our cherished order of predictable mediocrity and manageable chaos.
My forensic analysis of his résumé reveals a scandalous truth: Omisore is dangerously overqualified for the mundane business of governance.
Why should a man armed with a Bachelor’s, Master’s, and PhD in Electrical Engineering, Building Services, and Infrastructure Finance & Management seek to govern in a system that celebrates confusion over competence?
Governance in this clime thrives on mystification — not understanding. A good governor must be easily bamboozled by inflated project proposals, not one who can calculate the cost of a power plant to the last nut and bolt.
Worse still, his tenure as Chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee gave him an inconvenient grasp of fiscal discipline and budgeting — a curse that could make embezzlement difficult and accountability fashionable. What heresy!
Imagine a government where efficiency replaces slogans and expertise supplants emotion — that would ruin the entire political entertainment industry.
Omisore’s political resilience is equally disturbing. In a nation where politicians crumble at the first whiff of scandal, this man simply refuses to die politically.
After his tumultuous removal as Deputy Governor, he committed the unforgivable sin of resurrection: returning to win a senatorial seat while still facing trial. That’s not politics — that’s resurrection power.
He has traversed the political spectrum like a seasoned statesman, not a serial opportunist — from AD to PDP to SDP to APC — proving that his loyalty is not to tribal partisanship but to progress itself. In Nigeria, that’s a dangerous virus of pragmatism.
As George Bernard Shaw once said,
“The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all progress depends on the unreasonable man.”
And that, precisely, is Omisore’s unforgivable flaw — he is unreasonably progressive.
Perhaps his greatest sin is his good nature. For over two decades, this man has quietly paid the hospital bills of indigent patients at the Obafemi Awolowo University Teaching Hospitals Complex (OAUTHC) — year after year — without turning it into a press conference or political jamboree.
No banners. No photographers. No dancing praise-singers. Just quiet compassion.
Such behavior endangers the political ecosystem. How can others thrive when one man insists on helping the poor without a camera crew? He ruins the market for those who trade poverty for power.
As Nietzsche warned,
“He who fights monsters must take care that he himself does not become too good — lest he expose the monstrosity of others.”
By this measure, Omisore is guilty as charged.
If allowed to contest — and heaven forbid, to win — Osun risks ending up with a governor who actually understands infrastructure finance, can survive political storms, and still remembers the poor.
A man who knows what he’s doing is the most dangerous man in a system built on improvisation.
He would turn governance from theater into work, from noise into results, from promises into progress. He is not coming to dance or make merry but to govern — and to put Osun State where it truly belongs: as the Number One State in purposeful governance.
Such a man must be stopped — or, perhaps, celebrated.
Therefore, with reluctant admiration, I submit that Otunba Iyiola Ajani Omisore must indeed proceed with his campaign to Fix the Broken, Restore Our Dreams.
For Osun, at this crossroads, needs not a showman but a statesman; not a dancer but a designer; not an entertainer but an engineer of destiny.
As Winston Churchill reminded us,
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal; it is the courage to continue that counts.”
Let Osun then choose courage over convenience. Let competence scandalize complacency. And let Omisore’s ambition — audacious, dangerous, and utterly necessary — remind us that sometimes, the purest form of truth is simply saying things as they are.
