Osun 2026: Ogunbiyi Is Light Years Ahead Of Other APC Aspirants
- By Kayode Akanni
With the groundswell of support from all the major stakeholders and leaders in Osun State’s All Progressives Congress, it is becoming clear that Dr Akin Ogunbiyi is favoured to emerge as the winner in the party’s primary election scheduled for December 13, 2025.
All the major party chieftains as well as community leaders in the State of the Living Spring have lent their voices in support of the aspiration of the Ileogbo-born entrepreneur, businessman and strategist. The consensus among all and sundry is that with his popularity among the grassroots people, the elite and even traditional rulers, Ogunbiyi stands a good chance of defeating Governor Ademola Adeleke inm the governorship contest slated for next year.
Ogunbiyi, the Chairman of Mutual Benefits Assurance Group, is perceived by many as the only APC governorship aspirant that is acceptable to everyone in the state, including his co-contestants. Similarly, he is seen as the stabilizing force that can lead the party to victory in 2026. While it is believed that the emergence of some of the aspirants may polarize the party and its members, the general belief among party faithful is that the only aspirant whose emergence would not create any schisms in the party is Dr Ogunbiyi.
One of the factors going for Ogunbiyi is his ability to build great organizations from the scratch. Ogunbiyi, who founded the Mutual Benefits Assurance Group, built it from the ground up. The company, which he started in a one-room office, has grown over the years into a multinational, employing several thousands of people. Therefore, the word on the streets is that given the precarious state of Osun’s economy, the next governor of the state should be someone grounded in business management with demonstrable capacity to create wealth and opportunities for the people and lead Osun State into a secure future of opportunities and prosperity. Therefore, all hands point to Ogunbiyi as the best choice for the APC as the party gets ready for its primary election as well as the best person to take over from the incumbent governor.
Responding to his acceptance across the state during an interaction with stakeholders in Osogbo recently, Ogunbiyi thanked the people of the state, assuring that he would not disappoint them.
According to him, the leadership he is promising the people of the state is transformative with profound strategic clarity, value-adding communication ability, and character.
He said, “I will be a beacon of honour and integrity. I love transparency and accountability. My governance style will therefore be a unique paradigm shift of highly beneficial deliverables.”
He added, “We cannot maintain the status quo in Osun State where some leaders pocket power, and still remain in their comfort zone of playing it safe. They are stuck in routines, kill dreams and avoid discomfort, that critical path to growth and progress.
“Osun State must unite for progress. We must shut down the craving for short term pecuniary interests and selfish personal ambitions.”
Speaking about his plan for the state, the Group Chairman of Mutual Benefits said, “We have five key areas. First and foremost, we want to reform education. Education is my priority and our first-year budget will reflect that. If our secondary school students cannot boast of good results, then what are we producing? We will also work on the tertiary education to see that our institutions produce graduates with skills that will be relevant to our societal aspirations. So, I will focus on education. There will be compulsory free primary education for all our children.”
Ogunbiyi added that the second focal point of his administration will be agriculture.
He said, “Chief Obafemi Awolowo used agriculture to develop Western Region. But what has our government done in the area of agriculture? We have cocoa, which Awolowo developed and deployed massively. But how much cocoa are we selling now? Who is buying? I went round Osun and what I found made me cry. We have all these cash crops that are wasting away, and I will link them to agric-related industries. Oranges, for example, come, but nobody harvests oranges again. Mango, nobody harvests mango again. The little we have is only for consumption. We have companies that depend solely on fruits. I went to Songhai Farm in the Republic of Benin where they process fruits. I will not encourage the government to go into what private companies can do. But we will create an enabling environment so that they can come in.
“We will bring in agric-related industries. Look at oil palm; Malaysia came in 1969 to take oil palm seed, today Malaysia is the largest exporter of palm oil. What are we doing? I went round, there is no village I went to that I did not see small-scale palm oil processing by the people, using what we call ‘eku’. So, every available resource will be channelled into productive activities. The issue is that there is a lack of initiative in the area of productivity. When the initiatives are not there you cannot talk about getting things done. When we have a government that has initiative, things will get better. I will use my network to bring in private sector people who will put in money into these various things.
“We will also focus on the civil servants. We will train and re-train our civil servants. We need to actively re-train them because, without effective civil services, no government can succeed. I will pay attention to that. I will motivate them to be at work, I will guarantee payment of their wages. People who are due for promotion will be promoted, and we would ensure payment of their pension. All these things relating to workers’ welfare would be given priority because you can’t develop anything without effective civil services.”
Ogunbiyi stated that part of his plans is to bring industrialization to Osun State.
He said, “Do you know that Osun has 26 commercially viable mineral resources? Ask the government, who are the people mining our gold? Can you identify them apart from Segilola? And they mine raw gold; it is the purest anywhere in the world, 98 per cent pure, and you can put a structure around that gold so that Osun State will earn 13% derivation revenue. We can take a cue from the oil-producing states. I have had engagements with people in the Ministry of Solid Minerals in Abuja. It is about $6 million to do a standard gold refining and processing plant, why can’t we have it?
“Today, you cannot say this is how much gold is coming out of Osun. Whoever gets a licence, we would supervise the licence. We will know the quantity of gold that is available. We know that mining is on the exclusive list but there are things you can do collaboratively with the federal government. So if you produce gold, we will know the quantity of gold you are producing and FG takes it, then I can now request for 13% derivation revenue. How much is the resource? Do you know that the medium of exchange in the world is the dollar but gold has taken over?
“Again look at the area of empowerment; it will interest you to know that all my years in Mutual Benefits Assurance when we wanted to differentiate ourselves from other players, we did it through retail insurance. That is why they call me the Apostle of Retail Insurance. And the backbone of retail insurance is empowerment. As an insurance practitioner, I am always doing empowerment. That is why you will find me in abattoir, you will find me with women selling ewedu, you will find me with people selling tomatoes. The people in motor parks, spare parts dealers, you will find me there. Look, I bought 25,000 pieces of Okada for people in the North, for empowerment.
“Okada is the standard mode of transport there, it is the status symbol, but how did we do it for teachers? We worked with the Nigerian Union of Teachers, NUT. We said let us have the list of people that have gratuity, and we saw that their gratuity is more than the price of okada. So we bought each Okada for N65,000 and not a dime was added to it, and we gave it to them at 7.5%, and added insurance of N5,000. The same thing with NURTW, we partnered with them. If you go round all the functional airports in Nigeria, you will find these cars on hire, we bought 400 for them, and they repaid the money. So when it comes to empowerment I am the master. So, there is a lot on the table which we can’t discuss today but I want to encourage Osun people to please free themselves from the bondage of poverty, to free themselves from bondage of an unsecured future. Here is Akin Ogunbiyi. I have brought them hope. And the greatest thing anybody can live on in Osun today is hope for a better tomorrow.”
On job creation, Ogunbiyi said, “I keep saying that agriculture will be the bedrock of our administration. People say young people are moving out of agriculture, but it is not just starting. In the last 20 years, young people have moved out of agriculture and we are left with people using hoe and cutlass and even those ones, 80 per cent of their produce is wasted, where it is not wasted, it is disposed of at an uneconomical value. If you go to our market in Iwo, Idioro around early August or mid-August to the end of August when farmers want to pay the school fees of their children, you see them with 120 tubers of yam that you can buy for about N10,000.
“We are going to create a commodity market; I will reintroduce the commodity board. So, we will make it so convenient for farmers, for young people to go into farming.”
He added, “In the local government, we are going to create over 4,000 jobs and I think in the first year, I should be able to create about 100,000 to 150,000 jobs. Look, from all I have said, by the time you do gold processing and refining, and also do agro-allied industry, we should be able to create at least about 100,000 jobs and people will be seeing it; we are going to be very transparent. It is not going to be an exclusive government, people will have access to our government, and they will have access to information.”
- Akanni sent in this piece from Oke-Baale, Osogbo.
The opinions expressed in this publication are solely those of the author. It does not represent the editorial position or opinion of OSUN DEFENDER.
