By Oyo Amebo
There are towns where people grow used to standing still, places where promises drift through the air like dust, settling nowhere, changing nothing.
Lagelu was one such place. Its story had long been written in the language of postponement: soon, later, not yet. Generations learned to make peace with waiting, because waiting was all the town ever seemed to be offered.
But every so often, a community meets someone who refuses to keep pace with stagnation. Someone who walks into office not to inherit excuses but to dismantle them. When Honourable Mudashiru Kamorudeen stepped into leadership in 2023, nothing announced itself with fireworks. No manufactured spectacle, no elaborate choreography of politics. Yet, unmistakably, something shifted.
It began with the roads, not as symbols, but as lifelines. The routes that once collapsed under rainfall, swallowing tyres and tempers, started to emerge with purpose.
Villages and markets no longer felt like distant cousins; they became neighbours again. What asphalt cannot speak in words, it recounts in movement: traders travelling without fear, children reaching school without being trapped in mud, farmers reaching their buyers with produce still fresh. A town stitched back together by the steady hands of a leader who understands that accessibility is dignity.
And then came the classrooms. Buildings once resigned to neglect were quietly revived. Clean walls, restored furniture, functional learning spaces, it wasn’t decoration; it was affirmation.
Teachers found themselves supported rather than abandoned. Pupils stepped into rooms that no longer whispered of decay but of possibility. For the first time in years, education felt less like endurance and more like promise.
Health, too, found its way back to the people. Clinics that had faded into near irrelevance began to breathe again—staffed, equipped, and open.
The relief is visible in the faces of mothers who no longer fear an empty ward; in the steps of the elderly who know care will not elude them; in the confidence of workers who no longer postpone treatment. It is a quiet revolution, the kind that saves lives without announcing itself.
Security followed suit. With the revitalised Amotekun Corps base standing firmly in place, anxiety no longer defines the rhythm of nights in Lagelu.
Order has replaced uncertainty, preparedness has replaced panic. Safety is no longer reactive, it is present, visible, dependable.
What makes this transformation remarkable is not simply what has been achieved, but how it has been achieved. Kamorudeen inherited a blank slate, no half-finished projects, no pipeline of easy wins.
He built from scratch, brick by brick, guided by deliberateness rather than drama. Every action carries intention: roads made to outlast seasons, school furniture built to outlast election cycles, health centres revived not for show but for service.
His alignment with Governor Seyi Makinde’s philosophy of accountable governance is evident, and mentorship from figures such as Otunba Seye Famojuro has fortified his journey.
Yet his leadership bears a signature entirely his own, measured, thoughtful, uninterested in applause but deeply invested in outcomes.
And so the everyday scenes of Lagelu have changed. The conversations in homes and at market stalls have changed. Life itself has changed.
Not because the community has acquired perfection, but because it has rediscovered momentum. The people who once waited now walk with certainty. The town that once stood still now moves with purpose.
Under Kamorudeen, governance is no longer an idea; it is a reality you can touch, drive upon, learn within, and live safely under. Lagelu has traded its old posture of patience for a new one: progress, quiet, steady, unstoppable.
Lagelu is no longer a waiting town. It is a working one.