By Pelumi Olajengbesi Esq.
President Tinubu today remains the most successful politician in Nigeria, regardless of whatever metrics anyone chooses to use. That kind of success is not an accident. It is a lifetime of strategy, structure, timing, and the discipline to think beyond the next election.
Tinubu has little left to prove in the ordinary sense. He has power, he has means, and he has reached the final peak that Nigerian politicians spend their whole lives chasing. At this point, the presidency is no longer about survival for him. It is about legacy, and it is about how history will describe the choices he made when he had the full authority to make them.
Governor Ademola Adeleke sits in his own humble yet similar space, respectfully limited to Osun State. Adeleke is blessed, and he comes from a blessed family. If he were not Governor of Osun State, his life would not become miserable. He would not lack comfort. He would not become invisible. That matters because it changes the psychology of leadership. That, more than the noise of daily politics, is what often separates the leader who wants to build from the leader who only wants to hold. It is about service, legacy and passion for Adeleke.
Providence placed Tinubu and Adeleke in different political parties, yet their relationship has often appeared calm, gracious, and practical. It is the kind of relationship that does not need daily loud announcements to prove that it exists. There is a maturity that comes when two politicians are secure in themselves. When two leaders are secure, cooperation becomes easier. That is why the idea that there is some deep conflict between President Tinubu and Governor Adeleke has always sounded more like gossip than reality. Even where interests differ, the tone has not been poisonous.
It is also easy to see why a functional relationship would exist. Tinubu is governing Nigeria, and Osun is part of Nigeria. Adeleke is governing Osun, and the federal government remains the biggest lever of opportunity for any state government, whether people admit it publicly or not. The mature approach is to cooperate where cooperation benefits the people, and to compete only where competition is unavoidable. That is what leadership looks like when it is not driven by insecurity.
At the emergence of President Tinubu, Governor Ademola Adeleke was one of the few governors who mobilised support for the President’s preferred candidates for Senate President and Speaker of the House of Representatives, at a time when many governors were still calculating their distance from the new centre. He did not join the silent sabotage or the cautious indifference that often greets such contests. He rallied the Osun caucus in the National Assembly and mobilised support for the President’s leadership choices in both chambers. The President had to commend and appreciate Governor Adeleke. He also, without being asked, mobilised the same caucus to give massive support for Oyetola’s nomination as a minister, unsolicited.
In a system where the battle for principal officers can become the first real test of presidential authority, that kind of support is not a small gesture. It is loyalty without noise, cooperation without condition, and politics played with the understanding that stability at the centre can translate into opportunity for the state. This is who Adeleke is, a man with a heart of love.
Yet the problem with politics is that every sweet relationship attracts bitter spectators. The more a governor appears comfortable with a president, the more some people around the president begin to fear displacement. The more a governor appears welcomed at the centre, the more some actors within the centre begin to worry about who will become irrelevant if that welcome becomes permanent. That is how internal politics works. It is not always about ideology. It is often about who will be the recognised pillar, who will be ignored, and who will lose control of the local structure that gives them oxygen.
This is where Wike and Oyetola become important characters in this story, not necessarily as villains, but as examples of a similar temperament. Both men are ministers in Tinubu’s government. Both men carry political histories that still pull at them like unfinished business. Unfinished business has a way of turning public service into personal struggle.
Wike is the kind of politician who does not merely disagree, he confronts. He does not merely compete, he seeks dominance. He is a man of energy and nerve, and even his critics admit that he can mobilise. He is also a man who often makes every environment feel like a battlefield. As Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, he holds one of the loudest offices in the country. The danger with that kind of temperament is not that it lacks ability. The danger is that it tends to interpret every disagreement as a war, and when politics becomes permanent war, peace starts to look like weakness.
Oyetola operates in a different way, quieter, less theatrical, and less crude in public posture, yet he is a weaker, “China” version of Wike. He has a permanent interest in the Osun governorship seat. The truth is that Osun politics is not kind to politicians who have been rejected at the ballot and then appear determined to return through a proxy, as though the voters never spoke. Whatever anyone thinks about the last Osun transition, the memory is there. In politics, memory is power. A politician can be respected in Abuja and still struggle to be loved at home. Oyetola can hold federal office and still face the reality that Osun voters have moved on emotionally.
This is why the idea of Adeleke joining the APC became a battle of survival for Oyetola. On paper, it would look like a strategic merger of state popularity and federal alignment, and it would come with a development argument that is easy to sell. President Tinubu would have welcomed Adeleke into the APC gracefully. Still, it would have raised the one question that nobody can avoid in Osun. Who leads the house. Politics is ultimately about where authority sits.
If Adeleke had crossed over and become the leader of the party in Osun, it would have shifted the internal balance of the APC in a way some people would experience as humiliation. The resistance would not be philosophical. It would be territorial. It would be about who becomes irrelevant. That is the kind of politics that produces bitterness in private and sabotage in public. For Oyetola, the APC would rather lose Osun State than allow him to share his authority or lose control of the party structure.
Omisore exposed that Oyetola called for rescue when he heard Governor Ademola Adeleke was in talks with the Presidency. Oyetola wants to remain the absolute leader in Osun State, and for him, peace, harmony, and progress become secondary. This is cantankerous, like a small Wike. The difference is that Wike comes with capacity, while Oyetola does not.
What often ruins politics is not ambition. Ambition is normal. The ruinous spirit is bitterness, and the refusal to accept that the world can move forward without you being the central character. Osun people still remember how they voted him out, and in Osun, political memory does not dissolve simply because Abuja has provided a new seat.
What should be appreciated is that Adeleke appears to have listened to the mood at home. The voters of Osun are not children. They have their own pride and their own boundaries. They can support a president and still insist that their governor must remain their governor. That is why any movement that creates the impression of being forced, or being negotiated without the people, will always carry a cost.
So when people try to sell the story of the next Osun State election as Tinubu versus Adeleke, they are missing the real issue. The real issue is not hostility between the president and the governor. They are both fine. The real issue is the discomfort of those who fear what a stronger relationship between them would mean for local power calculations. The two of them can cooperate for development without turning Osun into a hostage of internal party egos.
The quiet strength of Tinubu and Adeleke is that neither of them needs permanent war to feel important. If Nigeria is to improve and Osun is to deepen its progress, the country needs more of that temper, less noise, less bitterness, and more leaders who can cooperate without insecurity, and compete without hatred. That is the real politics beneath the headlines, and it is the politics that will matter when history writes its summary.
Pelumi Olajengbesi is a Legal Practitioner.
