Princess Catherine Oladunni Odu: The Woman Ondo Has Been Waiting For
There are moments in the life of a state when history does not just beckon, it insists. The vacancy in the Ondo South Senatorial seat is one such moment, and Princess Catherine Oladunni Odu is the answer that moment demands. What makes her candidacy compelling is not merely what she represents in the abstract. It is the specificity of what she has done, the concreteness of what she has built, and the clarity of what her elevation to the Senate would mean for Ondo State, for Nigerian women in public life, and for the broader democratic project this country continues to labour toward.
Princess Odu is not a political newcomer seeking to learn on the job. She is a woman who has spent five decades building, serving, and leading across some of the most demanding offices in Ondo State and the Nigerian federation. Her record is not the product of political connections or patronage. It is the accumulation of deliberate service, hard earned credentials, and institutional trust that spans military and democratic administrations alike. The consistency of that record across different political seasons is itself a form of testimony. Politicians come and go with the tides of electoral fortune. Princess Odu has remained relevant, trusted, and effective across them all.
Her educational background alone places her in a class that few Nigerian public figures can match. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Sociology from the University of Benin, where she graduated with a Second Class Upper Division. She followed that with a Master of Science in Industrial Sociology from the University of Calabar, giving her a grounded understanding of how labour, industry, and society interact, a body of knowledge that is not academic decoration but a practical lens for interrogating policy. She then obtained a Bachelor of Laws from the University of Lagos, again with a Second Class Upper Division, and this time she did not just pass. She won the Vice Chancellor’s Prize for best performance in her graduating class. She also received the C.E. Abebe Prize for Best All Round Final Year Student. She proceeded to the Nigerian Law School and was called to the Bar, again with a Second Class Upper Division. She then returned to the University of Lagos for a Master of Laws degree, which she completed with distinction in 1992.
These are not ceremonial degrees assembled to satisfy a public profile. They are qualifications earned under examination conditions, across different disciplines, at different stages of life, all while she was also building a professional career in federal service. The Vice Chancellor’s Prize and the distinction in the LLM are details worth pausing on. They signal not just academic participation but academic excellence at the highest level of scrutiny. This is a woman who competed in Nigeria’s most rigorous institutions and came out at the top.
Her service to the state and the nation is equally compelling, and it stretches across institutional contexts that speak to the full range of governance. After completing her National Youth Service Corps programme in 1980, she joined the Federal Ministry of Employment, Labour and Productivity, where she served for a full decade. A decade. Not a brief posting or a transitional role, but ten years of continuous federal service that gave her an intimate understanding of how labour markets work, how workers are protected, how productivity is measured, and how the federal bureaucracy functions from the inside. That is the kind of institutional formation that cannot be replicated in a briefing room or a campaign office.
Her political service to Ondo State began during the era of military administration, and that context is important. Commissioners appointed under military governments were not chosen by the logic of electoral reward or political balancing. They were selected on competence. Princess Odu was appointed Commissioner for Education, then Commissioner for Women Affairs, in that environment. The fact that successive administrations, both military and civilian, continued to find uses for her abilities says something about the quality those administrations were consistently recognising.
She chaired the Ondo State Universal Basic Education Board not once but twice, under different governors, in different political climates. The SUBEB chairmanship is not a passive oversight role. It involves directing the delivery of basic education across all local government areas, managing federal and state allocations, coordinating teachers, infrastructure, and curricula, and being accountable for outcomes that directly affect the youngest and most vulnerable members of society. Her double tenure in that role means she is among the most experienced voices in Ondo on education reform, a subject that sits at the very core of any serious conversation about the state’s future.
She served as Federal Commissioner of the Public Complaints Commission in Akure and as Director of the Federal Medical Centre, Asaba, extending her experience from state governance into federal institutional management. Each role added another layer to what is already an unusually comprehensive administrative biography. By the time she was appointed Secretary to the State Government in March 2021, she was not a newcomer being given a chance. She was a seasoned administrator being placed where she was most needed.
That appointment as Secretary to the State Government is a capstone that deserves particular emphasis. The SSG is not a ceremonial post. It is the highest administrative office in a state government, the point at which policy, coordination, and execution converge. The person holding that office keeps the machinery of government running. Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, a man not given to sentimentality, made his reasoning public when he named Princess Odu to the role. He cited her proven integrity and her outstanding record of performance. This Day newspaper, in its coverage of the Akeredolu administration, described her as one of the brightest stars in that government. These are judgements rendered not by admirers but by observers watching a professional at work.
And she made history in that role. She became the first woman in Ondo State history to serve as Secretary to the State Government. This is not a minor distinction. Ondo State is over five decades old as a political entity. For all those years, and through all those administrations, no woman had reached that level of the executive. Princess Odu broke that record. The Senate would be the next record to break, and it would be broken by the same woman.
That particular historical dimension cannot be separated from the broader national picture. Nigeria currently ranks 180th out of 185 countries on the Inter-Parliamentary Union’s global index for women’s parliamentary representation. The 10th National Assembly has only four women in a Senate of 109 members, a representation of 3.7 percent. In the House of Representatives, women occupy only 16 of 360 seats. Fourteen state assemblies across Nigeria have no female member at all. These are the statistics of a democracy that has not yet fully reckoned with the citizenship of half its population.
Ondo State sits within that national failure, and its specific failure at the senatorial level is notable. Among the six states in the Southwest, Ondo is the only one that has never produced a female senator. It has also never produced a female deputy governor. This is not a reflection of the capacity or ambition of Ondo women. Ondo women are educated, organised, and politically engaged. It is a reflection of a political culture that has found reasons, in every election cycle, to defer the elevation of women to another season that never seems to arrive. The Ondo South vacancy is a direct confrontation with that history. It is an opportunity to break a pattern that has nothing to recommend it and everything to lose by continuing.
The Reserved Seats for Women Bill currently before the National Assembly, sponsored by Deputy Speaker Benjamin Kalu, proposes constitutional amendments to create additional seats reserved exclusively for women at the federal and state levels. Even if that bill passes in its most ambitious form, women’s representation in the National Assembly would rise to only 13.6 percent, a figure the bill’s own sponsors describe as abysmally low. That structural solution, if it comes, will take time. Advocacy, lobbying, and legislative procedures are not quick processes. While that fight continues, every organic opportunity to seat a qualified woman must be taken. The Ondo South vacancy is exactly that kind of opportunity. It is available now. The candidate is available now. The moment will not hold indefinitely.
There is also the question of what a senator with Princess Odu’s background would actually bring to the legislative chamber. A senator who has managed federal labour policy, reformed basic education at the state level, navigated legal and administrative systems across multiple institutions, and overseen the internal coordination of a state government does not need time to find her footing in Abuja. She arrives with a policy vocabulary, an institutional memory, and a governance instinct that most newly elected legislators spend their first term developing. The Senate is not merely a platform for representation. It is a working legislative body that produces laws, scrutinises executive action, and shapes national policy. Princess Odu is equipped for that work from day one.
Her professional standing reinforces this. She is a Patron of the Nigerian Bar Association, a recognition from a professional body that does not extend such status lightly. She is a Dame of the Methodist Church of Nigeria. She has received awards from the National Council of Women Societies, the International Inner Wheel, and the Association of Professional Women Engineers, among others. These are community recognitions from organisations that observe character and conduct over time. They are not purchased or inherited. They are earned through the accumulation of trust and demonstrated commitment to something larger than personal advancement.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu campaigned on a promise of equity and fairness for women as a top priority. He has appointed more women to federal executive positions than previous administrations, and the First Lady, Senator Oluremi Tinubu, has publicly backed the Reserved Seats for Women Bill. These commitments carry weight precisely because they are visible and on record. But commitments made in the abstract become credible when they are translated into concrete decisions. The Ondo South vacancy is a concrete decision. Supporting Princess Odu’s emergence through the APC primary and the senatorial nomination process would be one of the clearest demonstrations available to party leadership that the commitment to women in governance is not aspirational language but operational policy. The moment calls for that demonstration.
Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa and APC leaders in Ondo State face the same test. Political parties frequently speak of inclusion when it costs them nothing. The test of genuine commitment is what happens when a seat is open and a woman of unimpeachable quality is available. Does the party reach past her in favour of a familiar face, or does it recognise that the most qualified candidate and the most historic choice are, in this case, the same person?
Princess Catherine Oladunni Odu has served Ondo State and the Nigerian federation across five decades, through governments of different orientations, without scandal, without equivocation, and without a single credible question raised against her character or conduct. She has five post-secondary qualifications. She has held offices that no woman before her had held in Ondo’s recorded administrative history. She has the bar’s respect, the community’s affection, the church’s honour, and the professional class’s admiration.
The vacancy is there. The record is there. The moment is here. If not this woman, then which woman? And if not this moment, then which moment will Ondo State finally decide is the right one? History is not patient. It presents itself and then it moves on. Ondo State and the APC must not let it pass.