How Ibadan politician Adeojo died without fulfilling his governorship ambition
Ibadan politician and founding member of the Peoples Democratic Party, Yekini Adeojo, died without achieving his cherished dream of becoming the governor of Oyo State.
As the gubernatorial candidate of the PDP in the state in 1999, the businessman, who was also the Seriki Musulumi of Yorubaland, lost the election to the late Lam Adesina of the Alliance for Democracy (AD).
Undeterred, Adeojo made several other attempts to become the state governor but each time faced significant opposition from the late strongman of Ibadan politics, Chief Lamidi Adedibu, one of the kingmakers in Oyo State politics and an influential stakeholder in Oyo PDP at the time.
Frustrated by his inability to reconcile warring party members after the post-2015 election crisis that engulfed the PDP, Adeojo, who was the former Deputy National Chairman (South) of the PDP, left politics, saying that he was “fed up with politics”.
Quoting him: .…”I have since discovered that it is not worth it after all.
“I want to face my private life and my business. That is it; it is not just worth it.
“I felt it is time to quit. Let me face my business and private life. I think that is the best thing to do,” Adeojo had stated in a 2016 interview.
His death in the early hours of Friday at his residence in the Iyaganku Government Reserved Area in Ibadan, Oyo State, signifies the end of an important era in Ibadan, Oyo State, and Southwest politics, one full of turbulent politicking.
