By the time Ogun’s gubernatorial hopefuls had begun printing flyers and plotting alliances, Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola (better known by his moniker, Yayi) had already laid down a mosaic of quiet victories.
Not the kind measured in headlines or hashtags, but in kilometres of road, classrooms repaired, traders revived, and alliances, oh, so delicately brokered.
To the unbothered Nigerian onlooker, Yayi might appear to be just another senator navigating the potholes of federal politics. But speak to a market woman in Ilaro, a student in Ota, or a party stalwart in Abeokuta, and you’ll hear it: a name spoken not with bombast, but with something approaching reverence.
Yayi has been many things: a chartered accountant, a seasoned lawmaker, and now chairman of the powerful Senate Committee on Appropriations. But it is his transformation into the political lodestar of Ogun West that most startles even his fiercest detractors.
His constituency projects hum with intentionality. His philanthropic touch is quiet but far-reaching. And perhaps most critically, his political machine is not just well-oiled, it’s fully synchronised.
While others announce ambition, Yayi seduces it. Where his rivals tour in convoys and boast of manifestos, he invests in asphalt, in solar panels, in rice mills. His war chest, whispered to be among the most formidable in the region, isn’t flung about with vanity. It is deployed with the precision of a man who understands that true power moves in silence.
Critics groan that he is too strategic, too calculated, too quiet. But in Nigeria’s operatic political theatre, where so many perform, Yayi rehearses. Over two decades in Lagos and now Ogun, he has mastered the rhythm of governance and the choreography of persuasion.
So, as 2027 creeps into view and Ogun’s political sky fills with balloons and promises, it is Yayi’s groundedness — his deeply rooted machinery, his cross-demographic appeal, and yes, his daunting financial stamina—that threatens to steal the show before it begins.
For now, he watches. He listens. He builds. Because Yayi, man of the moment, knows something the rest are just discovering: sometimes, the loudest campaign is the one that hasn’t yet begun.
