The death of former Ondo state governor, Rotimi Akeredolu, on December 27, 2023, has once again depleted the giant elites of Nigeria’s political class.
The quantity and quality of tributes expressing grief over Akeredolu’s death has been overwhelming. Nothing could have prepared Ondo citizens, and indeed the country at large, for the shocker.
The source revealed that all past Ondo democratically-elected governors have passed on except one — Segun Mimiko.
Their passing on re-echoes the words of English poet and playwright, Williams Shakespeare, who described the world as a stage where each person plays his part and leaves.
Like the biblical reference, to everything, there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven: A time to be born and a time to die.
Their demise had always bring and an era to a close as well as makes way for another. Here are briefs about the past dead governors.
- Michael Ajasin, served as governor of Ondo State from 1979 to 1983. He was the first democratically elected governor of the state. He died of “natural causes” in his home at the age of 78.
- Bamidele Olumilua was Ondo state governor during the third republic, from January 1992 to November 1993. In 2020, Muyiwa, the former governor’s son, announced his death, according to him, the father died at the age of 80 after a brief illness.
- Adebayo Adefarati died at the age of 76 from an undisclosed ailment. He was elected governor during the fourth republic at the exit of military rule in Nigeria on the May 29, 1999.
- Olusegun Agagu was 65 years when he passed on. He was also a deputy governor to Olumilua and the Ondo’s second democratically elected governor. The story has it that slumped and died in Lagos in 2013.
- Rotimi Akeredolu died at the age of 67. The Ondo state government said Akeredolu died of “complications from protracted prostate cancer”.
- Chief Olusegun Mimiko, the last man standing. He was a two-time state commissioner for health, and served as Ondo governor from 2009 to 2017. He was the first governor in the state to win a second-term bid since 1999.
