By Akinlabi Segun
A track record of deliberately and meticulously complementing the governance blueprint of His Excellency, Engr. Seyi Makinde, with impactful initiatives addressing education, healthcare access, and local economic challenges.
There is an old saying in the land of the brave: “Oro ti a ba fe so fun omo oloko, agbe ni a o fi se apeere.” (When you want to speak to a farmer’s child, you use the hoe as your illustration).
Let us be brutally honest. In the political landscape of Egbeda-Ona Ara, the air is thick with promises from men whose hands have never known the blister of the hoe. They come with fine suits and rehearsed grammar, but their track record is a barren field, a fallow ground where not even five solid seeds have borne fruits in six years. They are still looking for the starting line while the race has long been underway.
But there is a name that silences the noise of empty boasting. A name that echoes not from the soapbox, but from the very streets, the school halls, and the market squares: Dr. Ezekiel Temitope Oladimeji, fondly known as OTOPE.
While others are still searching for a boasting right as small as a mustard seed, OTOPE has built a mountain out of a molehill of service. When they claim to be preparing for office, OTOPE has already prepared the ground, planted the seed, and is watering the harvest. The numbers do not lie. Since 2021, through the OTOPE Foundation, over forty distinct empowerment programs and projects have touched the lives of constituents in Egbeda and Ona-Ara. This is not a promise booklet; it is a ledger of liberation and a track record that reflects sustained involvement in grassroots development.
What is even more instructive is the compass that guides these interventions. Dr. Oladimeji has not been engaging in random acts of kindness; he has been deliberately and meticulously complementing the governance blueprint of His Excellency, Engr. Seyi Makinde. In the Pacesetter State, the Governor has laid out a clear roadmap for sustainable development, focusing on education, health, and economic expansion. All of OTOPE’s doings so far are not a deviation from this path but a completion of it at the federal constituency level. While the Governor provides the state-wide framework and policies, OTOPE brings the grassroots execution, ensuring that the dividends of democracy trickle down to the very last person in Egbeda and Ona-Ara. He is the foot soldier ensuring that the vision of Omituntun 2.0 is not just a slogan in the capital but a living reality in the villages and wards.
Since that historic day at Ilaji Hotels and Sports Resort Hall in Akanran, a day that moved the goalpost of empowerment in Oyo State, this man has refused to put the cart before the horse. He understood a simple truth: to ask for a mandate, one must first offer a helping hand. That event was not a one-off showmanship; it was the opening chapter of a continuous story of support initiatives that respond to education, healthcare access, and local economic challenges, all in perfect sync with the state government’s agenda.
The OTOPE Doctrine: “Omo to ba reni gbere, ko ni reni to n ba a gbe.”
(A child who has someone to lean on will not feel the weight of his burden.)
How do you compete with a man whose curriculum vitae of compassion includes the facilitation of vocational training for over two thousand youths and young adults? He has equipped them in hair dressing, cake baking and decoration, tailoring, barbing, solar installation, and even modern skills like car tracking and GPS. He has given grants to farmers who were losing hope, empowered market women and artisans with direct cash boosts, and sponsored students for NECO and JAMB examinations on a yearly basis. He has lit up over thirty communities with solar panels, ensuring that darkness is no longer a constant bedfellow in the rural parts of the constituency.
Go to the public schools. There you will find evidence of the distribution of thirty thousand exercise books across thirty different institutions. That is not a trivial matter; it is a bridge between the student and a future free from ignorance. Go to the motor parks. Ask the Maruwa, Okada, and commercial bus drivers about the free fuel palliatives when the economy was tightening the noose around their daily earnings. Visit the markets and ask the Iyalojas about the man who facilitated modern toilet facilities where dignity was once a luxury. Speak with the elders and retirees who benefited from the free medical outreaches, a lifeline for those the system had left out in the cold. And ask the widows whose burdens were lightened. These are not the fantasies of a political manifesto typed in a cozy Abuja office; these are nails hit squarely on the head. These are over forty solid projects in a space where most contenders cannot boast of five.
The Verdict of the Ancestors and the People.
There is a final word for those who think representation is about the glamour of the Green Chamber and not the gutters and farms of Ona-Ara and Egbeda. “Ise ni oogun ise.” Work is the antidote to poverty and hardship.
Dr. Oladimeji is not looking for a job description in 2027; he is seeking a promotion based on a six-year probationary period of sheer, undeniable, and verifiable performance. He is the man who struck while the iron was hot, and he has been forging opportunities for his people ever since. To present anyone else as prepared would be to bury one’s head in the sand and ignore the blazing sun of evidence. The evidence is not in the clouds; it is on the concrete floors of newly empowered shops, in the brightly lit homes of rural dwellers, in the examination slips of students whose fees were paid, and in the healthier bodies of our elderly.
As Dr. Oladimeji looks forward to representing the people of Egbeda-Ona-Ara Federal Constituency at the House of Representatives in Abuja, his plan is not to start working. His plan is to continue working and to do even more. He is the man who has already tilled the soil. He is the one who deserves the harvest.
Dr. Oladimeji is the most prepared man to represent the people of Egbeda/Ona-Ara in Abuja. He’s the one who never stopped working, and the one who works in harmony with the Pacesetter vision of His Excellency Engr. Seyi Makinde.
