Your Excellency,
There is a particular kind of moment that arrives once in a generation, the kind that does not announce itself with drums and fanfare, but settles quietly into the laps of those bold enough to recognise it. Your Excellency, you are seated in the middle of one of those moments. And what you choose to do with it will determine not only the fate of this administration, but the story that Ondo State tells about itself for the next fifty years.
I write this not as a critic, nor as a partisan voice shouting from the sidelines. I write as someone who believes, with full sincerity, that the best chapter of your leadership has not yet been written. That belief is not born of flattery. It is born of a clear-eyed reading of where Ondo State stands, what it carries within its soil and its people, and what a truly courageous governor can still do with the time that remains.
The conclusion of the APC primaries in Ondo State has, as primaries often do, left its share of heat in the air. Some who contested have emerged victorious. Others, who invested their resources, their networks, and their deepest political faith in the process, have returned home without the ticket they sought. This is the nature of democracy, and no one who understands the system should be surprised by it. But what happens after a primary season is just as important as what happened during it. And right now, what happens next rests almost entirely in your hands.
Your Excellency, Ondo State is a rich state. Let that truth sit with you for a moment, because it is a truth that carries both a promise and an accusation. Across all 18 local government areas of this state, from Akoko to Ilaje, from Idanre to Ese Odo, from Owo to Okitipupa, the earth beneath our feet holds natural wealth that generations of governance have barely scratched the surface of. Our coastline, our forests, our bitumen deposits, our agricultural potential, our brilliant and restless young people who carry in their minds the seeds of industries that do not yet exist: all of this waits. All of this waits for a governor who is willing to move from the politics of survival to the politics of legacy.
But none of that wealth can be properly harnessed while the state remains divided. Political division is not merely a social inconvenience, it is an economic catastrophe in slow motion. When major stakeholders are at war with each other, when ward leaders in Akure feel abandoned, when influential voices in Ondo South feel unheard, when men and women who gave their energy to the growth of this party feel that the door has been quietly closed against them, the state does not only lose their goodwill. It loses their networks. It loses their access to federal connections. It loses the cooperation of their constituencies. It loses the multiplier effect that comes when a state is truly united behind a common agenda.
Your Excellency, you are the leader of this state. That is not merely a constitutional designation. It is a moral responsibility. It means that the burden of holding Ondo together falls on your shoulders, and no one else can carry it for you. The aspirants who competed in these primaries are not your enemies. They are your constituency. Their followers are your citizens. Their networks are your infrastructure for delivering the Our Ease Agenda to the last kilometre of every local government area in this state. A governor who marginalises them governs with one hand tied behind his back. A governor who draws them in governs with the full force of the state behind him.
And speaking of the Our Ease Agenda: this is the moment to move it from vision to monument. Not the kind of monument that is a plaque on a wall, but the kind that lives in communities for decades. The kind that a grandmother in Ifon points to when telling her grandchildren what good governance looked like. The kind that a young professional in Akure credits for the infrastructure that kept him in the state rather than forcing him to relocate. The kind that a farmer in Odigbo recognises as the turning point when the state government finally took rural development seriously.
Legacy projects are not built by accident. They are built by governors who make a deliberate decision that their tenure will mean something beyond their tenure. Road networks that connect communities to markets. Healthcare infrastructure that reduces the suffering of ordinary families. Schools and vocational centres that give young people a reason to believe in the state they were born in. Agricultural investments that turn our land into consistent revenue. Coastal development along our southern local government areas that unlocks what has always been there but never properly engaged. These are not dreams. They are decisions. And they are decisions that only you can make.
To do all of this, however, you need a state that is behind you. You need party structures in every local government that are functioning, not fractured. You need the men and women who understand Ondo politics at the grassroots level to be inside the tent, not organising outside it. You need the elders who carry institutional memory of this state to feel respected, not retired. You need the youth who represent the next fifteen years of this state’s political energy to feel that the Our Ease Agenda was designed with their future in mind, not just their votes.
Your Excellency, this appeal is personal because the stakes are personal. This is not about party management in the abstract. This is about Ondo State, a state whose people have waited a long time for a government that treats them as partners in their own development rather than beneficiaries of someone else’s generosity. The Our Ease Agenda promised them a partnership. The remaining tenure of your government is the period in which that promise either finds its fullest expression or fades into the long list of well-intentioned programmes that did not survive the weight of internal politics.
Pick up the phone. Convene the stakeholders. Sit across from the aspirants whose primary experience left them bruised. Not to manage them, not to contain them, but to genuinely ask what they know about their communities that your administration needs to hear. You will find, if you approach it that way, that they come not as rivals but as resources. Every credible politician in Ondo State who is currently outside the circle of your administration is carrying something that the administration needs. That is not a weakness in your position. It is an opportunity that is still open, if you move quickly enough to take it.
History does not remember primary results. It does not remember which candidate won which ward, or which aspirant secured which delegate. History remembers the leader who looked at a divided state and decided, at the moment when division would have been the easier path, to bring it together instead. History remembers the governor whose remaining tenure produced initiatives that communities still point to a generation later. History remembers the executive whose response to internal party turbulence was not entrenchment but enlargement.
Your Excellency, the Ondo State of tomorrow is not built in Abuja. It is not built in press statements or at commissioning ceremonies. It is built in the quiet decisions you make now, in the people you choose to include, in the projects you commit to completing, in the vision you hold wide enough for every Ondo citizen to see themselves inside it. The wealth of this state, its 18 local government areas, its coastal resources, its agricultural land, its human capital, its youth, its women, its elders: all of it is available to you. All of it is waiting for a governor who is ready to be remembered.
There is also a national dimension to this that your administration cannot afford to treat as secondary. President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda is not simply a federal programme. It is the political compact that binds every APC governor to a shared vision of what this country is working toward. Every policy direction out of Abuja, every infrastructure investment prioritised under the Renewed Hope framework, every social intervention designed to reach the most vulnerable Nigerians, all of it lands better, goes further, and creates more lasting impact in states where the governor is not just implementing the agenda but genuinely believing in it and building upon it. Your Excellency, Ondo State must be among the governors that President Tinubu can point to when he needs to show the country what alignment between the federal vision and state execution looks like. That is not a small thing. That is a seat at the most important table in Nigerian politics, and it is yours to occupy.
It is equally important, Your Excellency, that your administration maintains a strong and constructive relationship with the party at the national level. Professor Nentawe Yilwatda, the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress, leads a party that is navigating enormous complexity across thirty six states and the Federal Capital Territory. A state chapter that is cohesive, productive, and publicly committed to the ideals of the party strengthens his hand and strengthens yours in return. The relationship between a state governor and the national leadership of his party should never be one of mere protocol. It should be a genuine partnership, one in which Ondo State is recognised as a pillar of the APC’s structure in the South West and indeed across the federation. That kind of standing is earned through discipline, through unity, and through the visible delivery that makes the party proud to call you one of its own.
Be that governor, Your Excellency. Not because it is politically convenient. But because Ondo deserves it. And because you have the opportunity, right now, to choose the kind of leader your name will be attached to for the rest of this state’s history.
With deep respect and an unwavering belief in Ondo State.
Dr. Femi Akinkuebi
Party Chieftain, All Progresive Congress
Ondo State
