The race for Ogun State Government House is heating up — and this time, the fight is not just about zoning or party structures. It’s about blood, belonging, and whether Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola, popularly known as Yayi, is truly a son of the soil.
What began as quiet political murmuring has exploded into an open war of words. Opponents of the All Progressives Congress (APC) governorship candidate are accusing him of having roots in Ekiti State, challenging his claim to Ogun ancestry, and daring him to take them to court.
Adeola has dismissed the claims as false, defamatory and politically motivated. His critics, however, are not backing down. People’s Democratic Party (PDP) governorship hopeful Oladipupo Adebutu has openly dared the APC flagbearer to sue him, insisting he has documents to prove Adeola is not an indigene of Ogun. Suspended APC member Abayomi Hunye and PDP chieftain Folake Marcus-Bello have taken the same hard line, saying they are ready to meet him in court.
The senator had earlier issued a 24-hour ultimatum to Hunye and Marcus-Bello, demanding they produce evidence of their Ekiti claims or face legal action. Far from retreating, the critics have turned the ultimatum into a direct challenge: “Sue us.”
Into this storm has stepped Adeola’s stepmother, Alhaja Aminatu Abiola. Speaking publicly for the first time on the matter, the woman who said she hails from Iworoko in Ekiti flatly rejected the narrative. Neither Adeola’s father nor his biological mother was from Ekiti, she insisted. His father was buried in Lagos, not Ekiti. His mother was from Ogun — specifically Abeokuta. Adeola, she added, was born Sule and later took the name Olamilekan after converting to Christianity. “He is a son of Yewa,” she declared, challenging anyone with knowledge of an alleged Ekiti family house to produce proof. She said she is prepared to testify in court if the matter goes that far.
The controversy could not have come at a more sensitive moment. Adeola’s candidacy is tightly bound to the long-standing agitation for power to shift to Ogun West, particularly the Yewa axis. Since the creation of Ogun State in 1976, the senatorial district has never produced a governor. When Governor Dapo Abiodun presented Adeola to Ogun West APC stakeholders in May as the consensus candidate, he framed the choice as a deliberate attempt to correct that historical imbalance.
Traditional rulers in Kemta have publicly described Adeola as an indigene of Egbaland, while the senator himself maintains paternal links to Ago-Ishaga/Pahayi in Ilaro. Yet opponents continue to weaponise his long political career in Lagos — where he served in the State House of Assembly, the House of Representatives and the Senate — as evidence that his roots lie elsewhere.
Legally, the picture is more nuanced. Section 177 of the 1999 Constitution sets out the qualifications for governorship: citizenship by birth, age, party membership and educational qualification. It does not explicitly require a candidate to be an “indigene” of the state. Section 318, however, defines the phrase “belong to” a state by reference to whether a person’s parent or grandparent belonged to a community indigenous to that state. That distinction could prove decisive if the dispute ever reaches a courtroom.
For now, there is no judicial finding against Adeola. What exists is an intensifying political battle in which both sides are daring the other to produce evidence. A court case could settle the matter once and for all — or keep the issue alive as a dominant campaign theme for months.
Beyond ancestry, the contest is layered with other fault lines: the Yewa demand for equity, the historical rivalry between Ogun East and Ogun Central, the struggle for control of party structures across 20 local governments, and the personal rivalry between two seasoned politicians — Adeola and Adebutu — now standing on opposite sides of the APC-PDP divide.
For Adeola’s camp, the indigeneship question is a distraction designed to derail a carefully built political project. For his opponents, it is a legitimate test of legitimacy: who has the moral and historical right to claim the Yewa mandate?
With the 2027 election still months away, the battle over Yayi’s roots is only just beginning. Whether it remains political theatre or escalates into a defining legal confrontation will shape not only Adeola’s fate, but the broader narrative of who truly owns the Ogun West dream.