By Maroof Asudemade

Bimbo Adekanmbi wants Oyo voters to know that he too is a “victim” of the Ibadan Circular Road project because he lost a parcel of land in Ona-Ara to the construction. I sympathise with him.  But if Adekanmbi intends to turn his personal loss into a political credential, then he must be prepared for the obvious question: What exactly did he lose? And what did the ordinary victims lose?

Adekanmbi lost a parcel of land. Many ordinary Oyo residents lost their homes. Are what they lost same thing?

Adekanmbi did not become homeless because of the demolition. His family did not suddenly find themselves without a roof over their heads. He did not have to start looking for accommodation because the bulldozers had destroyed the only house he owned. He did not lose the place where his children slept, ate and grew up.

For many petty property owners affected by the demolition, however, that was precisely their reality. Their demolished houses were not surplus properties. They were not speculative investments sitting somewhere waiting for appreciation. They were their homes.

Some spent decades building them incrementally. Some borrowed money. Some relied on family contributions. Some built one room at a time from their meagre earnings. For such people, the demolition was not simply a reduction in their property portfolio. It was the destruction of their economic security and the roof over their heads.

That is why Adekanmbi’s attempt to place his land loss on the same emotional and economic plane as their experience deserves to be challenged. A politician must understand the difference between inconvenience and displacement. Adekanmbi saying he also lost a parcel of land at the Circular corridors is justifying the 500-metre corridors and the demolished structures along the routes. That’s a red flag Oyo electorate must notice in him. It means he will not back down on the 500-metre corridors on both sides of the  Circular Road and he is most likely to inflict more of such inconveniences on Oyo people if he’s elected a stooge governor to Seyi Makinde.

There is nothing wrong with Adekanmbi acknowledging that he suffered a loss. But there is something fundamentally wrong with allowing voters to believe that his experience automatically makes him representative of the poorest victims of the project. A wealthy or well-connected property owner who loses an undeveloped parcel can suffer financial disappointment. A petty homeowner whose only residence is demolished faces an entirely different crisis.

Adekanmbi asks: “How much have I lost?”

The petty homeowners ask: “Where will our families live?”

And it matters even more when the person making the argument is seeking to become governor of Oyo State. A governor cannot govern from the perspective of his own circumstances alone. He must be capable of understanding the pain of people whose economic realities are radically different from his own. The test of leadership is not whether a politician can say, “I too suffered.”

The real test is whether he can look beyond his personal experience and say: “I understand that what I lost is not necessarily what the poorest man lost.” Adekanmbi should not appropriate the suffering of the poorest victims. The people whose homes were demolished do not need politicians to compete over who is the bigger victim. They need justice. They need fair treatment. They need proper compensation where applicable, not the 485k damage allegedly paid to victims by Makinde for a home-building demolished! .

They need relocation or adequate alternatives where displacement has occurred. And above all, they need leaders who understand that development must not become a euphemism for making the poor carry a disproportionate burden.

Adekanmbi says that no sacrifice is too much for the development of Oyo State. That sounds good politically. But the critical question is: Should the poorest citizens be expected to make the greatest sacrifices while those with greater means merely surrender surplus assets?

If development is genuinely for the people, government must be concerned not only about building roads but also about the human beings whose lives are disrupted in the process. And then comes the question of competence

Adekanmbi is asking Oyo people to entrust him with the leadership of the state in 2027. Therefore, his statement should be examined not merely as the complaint of a landowner but as a window into how he understands governance. A governor must be able to distinguish between a landowner’s financial loss and a poor family’s displacement. He must understand compensation beyond figures on paper. He must understand that a house can represent decades of sacrifice, family history, security and dignity. He must understand that when government demolishes a poor man’s only home, telling him that the project is for the development of the state does not magically provide another roof over his family’s head.

That is what leadership requires: empathy, fairness and the capacity to see government policy from the perspective of those who have the least power to absorb its consequences. So, Mr Adekanmbi, nobody disputes that you lost land. Once again, I sympathise with the loss of your investment. Accept my sympathy.

But let us keep the argument honest. You lost a parcel of land. You did not lose your home. Many of those ordinary Oyo residents lost the only home they had. You can go home after discussing your loss. Some of them went home after the demolition only to discover that they no longer had a home. Have you seen the difference? I guess you didn’t do critical thinking before held mic to rant about the loss of your investment. It’s like mocking the less privileged victims that ‘what did you lose that I didn’t lose?’

And if you truly want to be governor of Oyo State, don’t merely tell us that you were also a victim. Tell us what you would do for the people whose losses were infinitely more devastating than yours. Because the real measure of a governor is not how loudly he speaks about his own sacrifice, it is how seriously he protects those who cannot afford to survive another one.