By Segun Olatunji
In the grand theatre of political desperation, the opposition Peoples Democratic Party in Ogun State has finally cracked the code of governance: who needs a manifesto when you have a family tree?
Welcome to the absolute nadir of political bankruptcy, where the PDP governorship candidate, Hon Ladi Adebutu and his merry band of policy-phobic ideologues have finally found their true calling: amateur genealogy.
Having completely run out of ideas, economic strategies and basic credibility, the opposition has hilariously decided that a family tree is a substitute for a governance plan. Adebutu and his camp have boldly pivoted from policy tracking to ancestry tracking. It takes a special kind of political genius to treat a DNA test like a minor inconvenience while viewing a structured policy document as an existential threat. Clearly, in their own world, proving who your father is requires far less imagination than explaining how you actually intend to run a government.
It is a spectacular comedy of cowardice. These political heavyweights will gladly queue up for a DNA swab just to prove their bloodlines, yet they absolutely lose their minds in sheer terror when handed a document as terrifying as a manifesto. Apparently, in their hollow universe, explaining who sired you is a breeze compared to the impossible task of explaining how you actually plan to run a state.
If the current state of the Ogun State’s opposition is any indication of what 2027 holds, then the PDP and its perennial, serial flagbearer are heading for an absolute cataclysm. It is both pathetic and deeply embarrassing to watch a supposedly serious political machinery reduce itself to an amateur genealogy club, hysterically ferreting for an opponent’s ancestry, utterly incapable of engaging in intellectual discourse or offering a shred of a governance blueprint to the electorate.
Instead of dealing with the stark realities of socio-economic development, the opposition has spent months weaponising a stale, expired and entirely fraudulent “atohunrinwa” narrative against Senator Solomon Olamilekan Adeola, popularly known as Yayi. Their latest hysterical meltdown insists that Yayi—a serving, ranking, high-performing Senator of the Federal Republic, representing Ogun West —is not from Ogun State, but is somehow a secret agent exported from Ekiti State.
Let us call this propaganda what it truly is: a cowardly smokescreen. The insistence on where a man’s grandfather slept two centuries ago is a ringing confession that the PDP possesses zero capacity, zero vision and zero substance to challenge the All Progressives Congress’ governorship hopeful, Yayi, on performance. They are terrified of a manifesto war because they know their own policy tank is bone-dry. They cannot debate infrastructure, they cannot articulate an economic agenda and they certainly cannot match the massive Federal footprints and tangible empowerment projects that Yayi has already delivered to the state
This isn’t just basic political mudslinging; it is a clinical demonstration of intellectual bankruptcy.
Just recently, Yayi’s Pahayi and Ilaro kinsmen—the actual custodians of the land, the elders who hold the history of Yewaland in their bones—stood up and publicly shut down this malicious theatre. Alongside his stepmother, they unequivocally reaffirmed Yayi’s indisputable roots in Ogun State. In a sane political clime, a definitive declaration from the candidate’s own ancestral home would signal the end of the circus. It would force the opposition to pack up their maps, swallow their pride, and finally do some real work.
But Adebutu and his desperate band of internet mercenaries didn’t get the memo. They can’t afford to. To drop the “Ekiti” lie would mean having to stand before the sophisticated electorate of the Gateway State naked, with absolutely nothing else to offer.
“Can you mention someone who remembered us during COVID-19 and was not in government and had no access to public funds? It is only Adebutu. If we allow strangers to rule over us, then we have allowed calamity. We want to protect our heritage,” PDP deputy governorship candidate, Dr Lateefat Sowunmi-Kolapo had sounded off last Friday at a community stakeholders’ meeting in Abeokuta, the state capital.
Let us call this propaganda what it truly is: a cowardly smokescreen. The insistence on where a man’s grandfather slept two centuries ago is a ringing confession that the PDP possesses zero capacity, zero vision and zero substance to challenge the All Progressives Congress’ governorship hopeful, Yayi, on performance. They are terrified of a manifesto war because they know their own policy tank is bone-dry. They cannot debate infrastructure, they cannot articulate an economic agenda and they certainly cannot match the massive Federal footprints and tangible empowerment projects that Yayi has already delivered to the state.
While the opposition is busy playing amateur immigration officers patrolling the borders, Yayi has been executing a masterclass in impactful representation. How do you convince a voter that a man is a “stranger” when they are driving on the massive Ilaro-Papalanto-Sagamu expressway, a critical economic artery he facilitated? How do you preach exclusion to the thousands of youth and women who have benefited from his mega-empowerment programmes, receiving multi-million naira grants, ICT tools, and vocational equipment to build modern businesses?
The contrast is staggering. While Adebutu is drafting fictional family trees, Yayi is busy lighting up rural communities with hundreds of solar-powered streetlights, constructing state-of-the-art primary health centres and building modern school blocks across Ogun West and beyond. He has facilitated massive agricultural intervention schemes that provided inputs and capital to local farmers, directly tackling food security while his critics are locked in air-conditioned rooms arguing about boundary lines and the exact location of his umbilical cord.
So, what is a desperate politician to do when outclassed on every front? You resort to xenophobic tribalism. You beat the drums of division. You treat the highly enlightened voters of Ogun State like fools who can be fed a steady diet of cheap gossip instead of actual governance.
But Adebutu and his cohorts are gravely miscalculating. The people of Ogun State cannot buy food with a fictional family tree. Potholes are not fixed by ancestry reports. The brilliant youths graduating from institutions across the state are looking for jobs, industrialisation and tech hubs—not a group of bitter politicians playing amateur genealogists.
It is high time the opposition is told the brutal truth: this lazy, regressive brand of politics is dead on arrival. If Adebutu and his fractured party honestly believe they are fit to govern a state that historically boasts intellectual giants like the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo; Nobel laureate Prof wole Soyinka, and the Ransome-Kutis, they must show their working. Where are the policy documents? Where is the rigorous plan for agriculture, healthcare and security? Where is the manifesto?
The silence from the opposition camp on these critical issues is deafening. They would rather spend millions sponsoring coordinated media hit jobs, hoping that if they scream “Ekiti!” a million times, the voters will forget to ask what the PDP actually plans to do for them in 2027.
The game is up. If the opposition wants to spend the next few years acting as obsessed stalkers of Yayi’s lineage, they are free to waste their time. But they should prepare themselves for the brutal reality of the polls. The electorate will not vote for a DNA test; they will vote for capacity, concrete infrastructure and proven leadership. And right now, the opposition has nothing to offer but noise, lies and a desperate, bitter craving for power they don’t know how to use.
Ultimately, this obsessive fixation on bloodlines reveals the ultimate truth about the PDP governorship flagbearer and his political enterprise: it is a ghost ship anchored on pure desperation. By treating DNA tests like a valid political platform while fleeing from actual manifestos, they have laid bare their profound intellectual bankruptcy. Leaders offer blueprints; spent forces offer paternity disputes. The voters do not need a laboratory results slip to diagnose exactly what ails this opposition—the utter lack of a single viable idea is diagnosis enough. If Adebutu and his cohorts spend half as much time drafting concrete solutions for the people as they do digging up Yayi’s family graveyards, they might actually look like a credible alternative, rather than a tragi-comedy act desperately searching for his next script.
. Olatunji, a Journalist, Political/Crisis Communication Strategist, writes from Ilaro, Ogun State
