Each year, the Ojude Oba festival blooms in Ijebuland like a riot of colour—horses prance, beads jingle, and the sun bounces off agbadas stitched with the ambition of kings. It’s culture as pageantry. But this year, something else shimmered beneath the embroidery: politics, sharp and deliberate.

Senator Solomon Adeola, more widely branded as Yayi, was supposed to chair the 2025 edition. Days before the festival, his name floated confidently on announcements. But as the drummers gathered, Yayi evaporated. Whispers followed like smoke.

Some say he was turned back at the expressway. Others, that security operatives had clear instructions. The palace, conveniently silent. The governor, noticeably distant. And Yayi? Absent, dramatically so.

A source close to the planning committee spoke of “disruption,” not the kind that breaks tradition, but the sort that threatens succession plans. Yayi, a Senator from Ogun West, has spent years planting constituency projects like breadcrumbs across the state. To many, his presence at Ojude Oba would have read like an endorsement for his 2027 governorship dreams. Apparently, that was too loud for comfort.

Governor Dapo Abiodun, according to insider murmurs, made it clear: if Yayi shows, he won’t. The organisers chose silence over standoff. After all, in Ogun politics, grace often means stepping back without being pushed.

There’s irony here. No Yewa-born politician has ever led the state since its creation in 1976, yet Yayi, born of Lagos but increasingly Yewa’s loudest son, believes he can rewrite that history. The governor, meanwhile, eyes a quieter succession—loyalists from Yewa who whisper, not trumpet.And so, in the middle of the drumming, one chair was left conspicuously unoccupied. Perhaps, at Ojude Oba, the only thing more revealing than the horse parade is who’s missing from the review stand.