Chartered accountant and World Bank Group consultant, Luqmon Oladele, speaks with DARE OLAWIN on Ogun State’s economic future, the 2027 governorship race, and why he believes the next governor must possess strong fiscal expertise, federal influence and a commitment to continuity in governance
As Ogun enters a defining governorship cycle, do you think the state’s economy demands a particular kind of leadership?
Within the past 18 months, the Gateway International Agro-Cargo Airport at Iperu has been commissioned by President Bola Tinubu; the Olokola Deep Seaport has been rebranded the Blue Marine Economic Zone and approved for take-off. Commercial oil drilling at Eba Island in Ogun Waterside has been approved, making Ogun an oil-producing state, and the Dangote cement complex at Itori completes this year, lifting in-state cement capacity to roughly 18 million tonnes a year, the largest concentration in Sub-Saharan Africa. Internally generated revenue rose from about N50.6bn in 2020 to N194.93bn in 2024, fourth nationally. And contrary to the usual assumption, Ogun is not an energy have-not: it already hosts well over a gigawatt of installed gas-fired generation on the Escravos–Lagos pipeline, running far below capacity only for want of firm gas. This is not a state limping toward 2027. Ogun is a state with existing extraordinary assets waiting to be unlocked with good governance and technical expertise.
What does that complexity require of the next governor?
Three things. First, the language of public finance, fluently. State debt is roughly N494bn; the 2026 budget is N1.67tn, a 58.3 per cent jump over 2025. Converting that ambition into delivered projects without a debt crisis is a discipline, not an instinct. Second, the ability to move federal resources into Ogun’s pipeline. The Industrial-Logistics Trinity — Gateway Airport, Olokola Port, Kajola Inland Dry Port — depends on federal-tier decisions: rail spurs, trunk roads, customs zone designations, and port concessions. Ogun cannot finance these alone. The next governor must be able to walk into the offices of the Minister of Works, the Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, the Senate President, and the President himself and have substantive conversations that end in substantive movement. Third, a consolidator’s mindset. Governor Dapo Abiodun has built foundations: the airport, 140 primary health centres, 7,000 housing units, and fourfold IGR growth. A successor who redirects or bulldozes each of these will burn his first 18 months before building anything new.
You have publicly aligned with Senator Olamilekan Adeola of the APC. Why him?
He is a Fellow of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria and the only aspirant who carries all three requirements earlier mentioned. He entered legislative life in 2003 in the Lagos State House of Assembly, chairing the joint Finance and Appropriation Committee through the Tinubu–Fashola transition that took Lagos’s IGR from roughly N5bn monthly to about N50bn monthly — the most consequential sub-national fiscal transformation in our democratic history. He then chaired the House Public Accounts Committee (2011–2015), the Senate Committee on Local Content (2017–2019), and the Senate Committee on Finance (2019–2023), through which four consecutive Finance Acts passed. Since August 2023 he has chaired Senate Appropriations, the most powerful committee in the National Assembly. On the public record, that is the most concentrated track record of public-finance committee leadership held by any active Nigerian politician.
How will you describe his emergence as the APC consensus candidate?
It was historic that former governors agreed to support Senator Adeola’s candidacy. That coalition of Governor Abiodun, Chief Segun Osoba, Senator Ibikunle Amosun, Otunba Gbenga Daniel, and President Tinubu has not always agreed on Ogun’s larger questions. They converged on Senator Adeola because the moment requires precisely what he has. I would say the consensus is a combination of meritocracy and political settlement.
What can you say about his record as the senator for Ogun West since 2023?
I am from Ogun West, Ayetoro, Yewa North, so I can speak to it directly. In two years, he facilitated over 300 constituency projects: 115 road projects, 32 primary health centres, 30 school buildings, 10 ICT centres, the upgrading of Federal Polytechnic Ilaro to university status, numerous empowerment programmes and a microfinance scheme reaching tens of thousands of market men and women. Senator Yayi has done well for Ogun State.
Ogun West has never produced a governor since the state was created. How will you describe this?
Forty-nine years without a governor from Ogun West is not an oversight to apologise for; it is a structural imbalance with real economic consequences. Ogun West hosts the Dangote Ibese plant, the Agbara industrial estate — the country’s most heavily concentrated industrial estate, we have the Yewa North and Imeko-Afon cotton belt which our master plan envisages as a 250,000-job textile complex, the Republic of Benin border-trade corridor, and the Tongeji oil province together with a proposed refinery. Yet on infrastructure-access indicators, it has consistently lagged behind Ogun East and Ogun Central. A governor from that zone, with a documented record of delivery in that exact zone, is positioned to correct that by attention-deficit reversal, not sectional preference.
Ladi Adebutu is now the Peoples Democratic Party’s candidate to contend with Adeola in 2027. Are you afraid Ogun West may lose it again this time?
Adebutu is a serious political figure, and no governorship contest should be approached complacently. But 2027 is structurally different from 2023. The APC enters this cycle with the rarest political alignment Ogun has ever produced, and I believe the APC candidate himself brings the most concentrated public-finance committee chain in Nigerian politics, with federal-tier leverage no opponent can easily match on day one. The 49-year Ogun West imbalance is not weakened because the PDP fielded an Ogun East candidate; it sharpens. February 2027 is about which governor is positioned to do the most urgent work in Ogun State, and I believe Senator Adeola will be that governor.
Do you have any concerns about Adeola’s governorship?
Of course yes. Constituency-project muscle does not translate automatically into state-wide governance. Leading 300 projects in one senatorial district is different in kind from leading thousands of projects across 20 local government areas. The next governor will need to surround himself with deep technical capacity, institutionalised master-plan-aligned budgeting, and resist the post-victory drift that has cost previous administrations their first year. None of those is a disqualification; they are tasks, and on the public record, I believe he is exceptionally well-prepared for them. My team is formally presenting a 12-year development masterplan for the incoming administration to evaluate.
What is this master plan all about?
It is a twelve-year development blueprint for Ogun State, running from May 2027 to May 2039, structured around a ten-point agenda of measurable commitments covering revenue, industry, transportation, education, health, housing, energy, digital government, and institutional reform. The headline targets are concrete: Internally generated revenue rising from N194.93 billion in 2024 to at least N2 trillion annually by 2039; 500,000 direct manufacturing jobs across eight designated industrial power clusters; effective in-state power generation of 5,000 MW; 100,000 housing units; 5,000 kilometres of roads; one functional primary health centre per political ward; universal basic education; and a sovereign savings fund seeded from the new Tongeji and Eba oil derivation, targeting at least one trillion naira in assets. The plan is modelled on Asiwaju Tinubu’s Lagos 1999–2007 institutional architecture — a Ministry of Economic Planning and Budget, an autonomous Internal Revenue Service, an annual Gateway Economic Summit on the Ehingbeti model, and statutory debt-sustainability rules. We have proposed that it be codified into law as the Ogun State Development Master Plan Act in Year 1 of the next administration, so it binds successive governments rather than being abandoned with each transition.
Ogun has many abandoned projects including the polytechnic in Ipokia. What will you say about this?
It is a real and documented problem. The Ogun State Polytechnic in Ipokia was proposed under Senator Amosun’s administration with NBTE accreditation already secured for 42 courses, and the Ogun State House of Assembly’s own 2024 resolution explicitly urged its revival. The development masterplan addresses this systemically. A plan-aligned budgeting will tie every appropriation to the 10-point agenda, codification of the plan as law will bind successive administrations to a 12-year horizon, and a 100-day rapid audit of all abandoned state projects will catalogue them for completion or land recovery. The Ipokia polytechnic sits firmly in the completion column, and Senator Yayi’s record on Federal Polytechnic Ilaro shows he finishes what others leave behind.
Some may see all of this as advocacy for Adeola rather than independent analysis. What is your response?
Fair to ask. Let me be clear — I am not Senator Adeola’s spokesperson. I am a development economist and a Chartered Accountant. I have spent months, together with my team, empirically researching what Ogun has, what it lacks, and what it most needs. We’ve got a clear technical case. The political case is clear. The historical case is clear. The vote in February 2027 should be too.
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