Dotun Babayemi: “The historic path to the attainment of the first 100 ward consultation tour”- Adelani Oyediran Ajanaku

Omooba Dotun Babayemi began his political journey towards the establishment of the 30 local governments and area council tour after securing approvals from the APC leader in Osun State, HE Alhaji Adegboyega Oyetola, and the state executive led by Sooko Tajudeen Lawal on May 19, 2025. Following this, on May 20, 2025, ODB and his consultation team visited Iwo, Olaoluwa, and Ayedire local governments to share messages of hope and unity while engaging with key stakeholders about his governorship ambition. After completing the tour, he returned to the APC state secretariat to brief the executive on his findings and suggest solutions for the challenges faced during the tour.

ODB sought the APC’s permission to tour 332 wards statewide, emphasizing the importance of his previous experience with the 30 local governments. This new tour aims to spread a message of hope, unity, and grassroots engagement, while also assessing the challenges each ward faces. This information is crucial for good governance as he prepares to represent the party in the 2026 elections.

To the average person, touring all 332 wards seemed unattainable and unnecessary. However, for ODB, a visionary man, it was a determined mission. He believed that visiting each ward would strengthen the party, its leadership, and his ability to bring abundant life to rural residents and local communities.

ODB used the occasion of the visit to the APC secretariat to again seek the party’s permission to commence another tour of the 332 wards across the state. There was no doubt that the experience of the 30 local governments and the area office tour informed ODB of the need to further seek for a second approval to carry his message of hope, unity and reawakening of the party membership to the grassroots with the aims of physically ascertaining the challenges the various wards are facing and to help him do a proper needs assessment of each localities which will serve as an elixir for good governance if allowed to lift the party’s flag at the polls come 2026. .

Starting from July 9, 2025, the second journey, which traversed various wards, began, covering five wards in Iwo, four in Ifedayo Local Government on July 10, and three in Ife South on July 11. These visits revealed significant challenges in many wards, including a lack of healthcare facilities, insufficient teachers, dilapidated school structures, impoverished communities, a shortage of potable water, no electricity, the absence of modern amenities, and poor rural roads. These issues severely hinder farmers’ ability to transport their produce, leading to spoilage. This reality has strengthened ODB’s commitment to gathering comprehensive insights into each community’s challenges to develop tailored needs assessments for future development.

It should be recalled that long before ODB joined the Osun APC gubernatorial contest, the act and art of undertaking consultation meetings by any gubernatorial aspirants with the party members and the general stakeholders had not assumed a refined and refreshing process whereby gubernatorial aspirants would directly visit, connect, and interface with the party members in their different wards for town hall meetings. The most common method was arranging consultation meetings with the party members either at the local government headquarters, senatorial districts, or by sending vehicles to bring party members to the city centre without necessarily gauging or understanding the difficulties of the rural dwellers in the rural communities by such leaders.

This age long grandstanding by the past political actors have since changed with the ODB joining the gubernatorial foray and with his resolve to physically carry his message of hope, unity and inclusion to the door steps of the party leaders and party members in their various wards which is seen as a mark of respect for the deciders of votes, the need to experience and feel what these party members are facing in their different wards, to directly interface with the people to have a first hand experience of their communal challenges.

This paradigm shift in the engagement, visits, attention, direct connections, and communication with the people at the wards has no doubt enhanced and improved the ratings, image, and perception of ODB across the entire political landscape as an unrepentant grassroot leader of no mean comparison in the state today. For his bold and audacious step, the party stakeholders and the electorates have been very excited, anxious, pleased, enthusiastic, encouraged by ODB leadership and are equally dispirited by the long years of neglect and fecklessness that have trailed the abandonment of the rural dwellers to their inglorious fate for years.

Given the fact that this is a new approach to connecting and interfacing with the electorates in Osun state, as begun by ODB, the process is no doubt taxing, stressful, strenuous, Herculean, time-sapping, energy-consuming, and resource-stressing. In most places visited, ODB messages resonated well with the people and got the audience electrified as he spoke in no uncertain terms about his desire to uplift the rural people to prosperity and abundance if given the opportunity. In most places, ODB just wanted to hear from the people about their concerns before reinforcing them with his message of hope and unity of purpose. In short, the majority of the speakers dubbed ODB as a complete grassroots personality who is trying to foster unity within the party and inspire the people to a prosperous tomorrow.

Notwithstanding all the challenges faced in the course of the journeys, ODB never looked back nor trepidated for a second because he had his focus beamed and etched on touching people’s lives and making meaningful impacts with the downtrodden communities.

Today, the journey of the tours of the 332 wards, which began on the 9th of July 2025 and which initially appeared unattainable and unassailable, has peaked and climaxed at 100 wards, leaving the team with 232 wards to visit. There is no doubt that the journeys were evidently torturous, debilitating, difficult, stressful, and in some wards too far apart, with most of the hinterland roads muddy, rough, broken, impassable and debilitating. On many occasions, the team’s vehicles got stucked and broken down inside the messy muds and rough rural roads and the vehicles had to be pushed by everyone, including ODB and sometimes towed away with heavy iron chains from the bad roads. On a few occasions, the team have had to move on a particular long-distance road for several hours on end because of the ruggedness and bad nature of the terrain.

Despite the discouragement and early warnings from some of the villagers that our vehicles would break down or be stucked or that the journey will break our enthusiasm, yet ODB insisted that the team must persevere to navigate through the roads in order to physically witness what the rural people are experiencing and encountering so that our experience will form part of his recommendations to the party at the state level.

Therefore, the doggedness, the never-give-up spirit, the spartan courage, and the determination of ODB to unravel the worlds of the rural lives was significant for him so as to witness their daily ordeal and to particularly key their challenges into his transformative manifesto. Again, this experience would fuel ODB’s determination and commitment towards directly knowing their communities and their various needs.

In all the wards visited, with every person ODB shook hands with, with every person he spoke with, with his messages of hope, unity and inclusion, the chorus of ODB being the first and the only governorship aspirant to have visited their wards and communities was graced with thunderous applause and admiration. This also stood ODB as a trailblazer, a pacesetter and a forerunner in first obtaining approval from the party to visit the local governments and the rural communities. Arising from this singular respect of ODB for the party, he has been hugely recognized, commended and celebrated as the only aspirant who has deemed it fit to physically tour the wards after his energy-consuming local government tours and despite the apparent and obvious difficulties on the rural roads and terrains. This sets him out from the others.

Thus, today, despite the rigors and the attendant difficulties on the roads, the ODB team has successfully attained the first 100 wards visitation across the three senatorial districts of Osun State. Therefore,  this no means feat calls for solemn prayers, appreciation to God Almighty for everyone’s safety, clear introspections and reflections on the numerous challenges encountered and the need to further ponder on the mechanisms of completing the outstanding 232 wards which is in line with one of the cardinal programs of the renewed agenda of President Bola Hammed Tinubu on grassroots development which is considered as a catalyst for food production, food security and economic prosperity in the country.

Thus, ODB’s ward-to-ward visitation has been rooted in a clearer focus, good intentions, rigors, vigors, resilience, courage, determination and the reawakening of the grassroots for future developments. There is no doubt that the tour of the wards has further boosted ODB’s image and ratings among the entire Osun people, pointing at his uncanny raw determination, sacrifice and his personal material resources which he has been deploying into achieving this feat. There is no denying the fact that this singular visitation by ODB to the wards has been a record breaker, a game changer which everyone has continued to admire, commended and applauded as a remarkable and unique record-breaking performance by any governorship aspirant since the creation of the state in 1991.

Since ODB began this remarkable consultation, the game has changed significantly due to his eloquent messages of hope, unity, inclusion, reawakening, and mobilization of the party members from their wards.   Hence, ODB’s audacious messages have continued to appeal to many undecided voters and numerous supporters for him everywhere he went. As a fresh face in the Osun political turf, ODB is a man with unblemished character, charisma, brains, humility, great vision, passion, the people’s perfect choice, a man with foresight and no doubt ODB is blessed with a formidable structure capable of winning big for the APC come 2026 elections.

In all these remarkable efforts, the ODB’s ward tours serve to promote APC as a party, reconnect the party with the grassroots and place the party in the forefront of future electoral victories, judging by the resultant joy and excitement recorded by the various wards visited by ODB.

Therefore as we begins the journey of the next 100 wards visitation across the state on Monday the 8th of September 2025, the team is imbued with a renewed spirit, renewed enthusiasm, unflinching commitment, greater vigor, strength and determination to ensure that all the noticeable challenges inherent in each ward are well documented for future references and possible implementation if allowed to fly the party’s ticket come 2026.

Ladies and gentlemen, young men and old, market women and men, and the young folks, as Osun hungers for a change in leadership in 2026, I believe that ODB is a man with remarkable vision and competence, poised to engender and foster greater prosperity and growth for the state. Omooba Babayemi has got the extraordinary gifts of leadership and character needed to lift Osun State from the current abyss and inertia to an industrial and technological hub.

Gentlemen and ladies, now is another such time for everyone to become part of this historic opportunity of rendering maximum support to Omooba Dotun Babayemi, a man capable of leading the state to greater heights.

In all, Omooba Dotun Babayemi’s leadership ethos, competence, integrity, exposure, humility, strong character, respect for the party, respect for the elders and his resilience in unifying all the party members and various tendencies together ahead of the 2026 elections has continued to won him significant support and remarkable respect from across the political spectrum which makes him the only aspirant capable of defeating the incumbent judging by his bridge building strength.