THE WOMAN ONDO NEEDS: WHY CHIEF OLAMIDE JULIANNA FALANA IS THE RIGHT VOICE FOR ILAJE/ESE ODO
There are moments in the political life of any constituency when the right candidate and the right moment find each other. For the people of Ilaje and Ese Odo Federal Constituency, that moment is approaching, and the name that speaks to it most compellingly is Chief Olamide Julianna Falana, widely known and warmly addressed as Ojay. She is not a political novice arriving at the door of federal representation with nothing but ambition and a campaign poster. She is a woman whose entire adult life has been an extended exercise in service, and whose credentials, temperament, and lived commitment to the people of this constituency make her candidacy not merely credible but necessary.
To understand why Ojay is the right person for the House of Representatives seat in 2027, you have to begin not with politics but with character. Long before she entered the corridors of governance as Special Adviser to the Ondo State Governor on Gender Matters, she had already built something meaningful from her own hands. As the founder of the Girls to Women Research and Development Centre, known as G2W, she created an institution designed specifically to lift women and girls out of vulnerability and into capacity. This was not a government programme. It was not funded by political patronage or designed to win votes. It was the kind of initiative that reveals what a person truly believes in when nobody is watching and no election is on the horizon. The G2W Centre empowers women through education and skills training, addressing one of the most stubborn barriers to female advancement in Ondo State and across Nigeria. That she built this before her most prominent appointments says everything about the authenticity of her convictions.
Her entrepreneurial footprint across Ondo State adds another dimension to her profile that purely career politicians simply cannot claim. She is a woman of business, with interests that span the length and breadth of the state. This matters enormously for federal representation because a legislator who understands commerce, who has felt the weight of payroll and the pressure of building something sustainable in a difficult economy, brings a practical intelligence to lawmaking that career civil servants and party loyalists often lack. She knows what it costs to create employment. She knows what regulatory environments do to small and medium enterprises. She knows, from personal experience, how policy can either open doors or slam them shut on hardworking Nigerians trying to build dignified livelihoods. That understanding will be invaluable in a chamber where economic legislation is debated and crafted.
Her two terms of service as Special Adviser on Gender Matters, covering 2021 to 2024 and then 2024 to 2025, gave her something even more valuable than policy experience: it gave her institutional knowledge of how government actually works, where its pressure points are, and how to convert advocacy into action. During those years she did not simply occupy a title. She championed policies designed to combat gender based violence, pushed for greater female participation in governance structures, promoted women’s emancipation across communities, and worked to support youth development at a time when Ondo State’s young population urgently needed attention. This is a record, not a promise. She has already done the work at the state level, and she is now seeking the mandate to carry it to a federal stage where the impact can reach further and run deeper.
The radio programme Kikelomo, which she created and has used to platform women’s issues and facilitate dialogue and counselling, speaks to a quality that is rarer than it sounds in Nigerian politics: a genuine instinct for communication and community engagement. Many politicians speak at their constituents. Ojay has built platforms for her constituents to speak to one another and to her. Kikelomo created space for women who might otherwise have had no public voice to share their experiences, seek support, and find community. In a constituency as historically underserved as Ilaje/Ese Odo, this kind of grassroots connectivity is not a luxury. It is the foundation of responsive representation.
Her educational formation is serious and substantive. A Master’s degree in Food Storage Technology from the Federal University of Technology Akure places her in a highly relevant knowledge space for a constituency whose livelihoods are deeply tied to agriculture, fishing, and the preservation of natural resources. A postgraduate degree in Education from the University of Ilorin broadens that foundation further. She also holds the chieftaincy title of Yeye Muagun of Ejiyan Ekiti, a recognition that speaks to her standing across cultural and community lines. And then there is the Award of Excellence from the National Council of Women Societies, which is not given to women who perform activism but to those who actually transform the spaces they occupy.
She is a daughter of the Iyun family, a woman who hails from Igbobini in Ese Odo Local Government Area. This is not a detail to be passed over lightly. In a contest for federal representation, the question of roots and belonging matters. Ojay is not parachuting into this constituency from a distance to seek a platform. She is of this land. She understands its peculiarities, its grievances, its underdevelopment, and its enormous but largely untapped potential. The creeks and communities of Ilaje and Ese Odo deserve someone in Abuja who will wake up every morning with a personal stake in their welfare, not merely a political interest in their votes.
What makes her candidacy genuinely compelling is the convergence of all these elements at a single point. She brings gender advocacy, entrepreneurial experience, governmental service, educational credibility, community roots, and a track record of institution building to a constituency that has for too long been represented by figures who offered far less. In the House of Representatives, where committees shape legislation and where relationships with federal ministries determine whether a constituency gets infrastructure or gets ignored, Ojay’s experience navigating government from the inside gives her an immediate advantage. She already understands the language of governance. She already knows how to turn advocacy into policy. She already has a network, a reputation, and a record.
The people of Ilaje and Ese Odo Federal Constituency deserve a representative who will walk into the National Assembly not to learn the job from scratch but to begin working on day one. They deserve someone whose entire career has been pointed, even if not always deliberately, toward this precise moment of service. Chief Olamide Julianna Falana has earned this opportunity in the most meaningful way a candidate can, by spending decades quietly building the qualifications for it before she ever declared an intention to seek it. That is who Ojay is. And that is exactly why she is the right candidate for 2027.
