Pressure, it seems, is no stranger to Gbenga Elegbeleye. But lately, the kind building around him is the hopeful kind. The kind that whispers, “Come home and help us.”
In Ondo North Senatorial District, murmurs have grown louder, turning into chants: “Elegbeleye for Senate.” They say he is trusted. They say he is tested. They say the Sunshine State needs more than sunshine – it needs stewardship. And if anyone fits the bill, it’s the man currently resurrecting the soul of Nigeria’s domestic football league.
Elegbeleye, now chairman of the Nigeria Premier Football League (NPFL), is busy conjuring a miracle most thought impossible – making Nigerians fall in love with their own league again. Clean officiating. Secure stadiums. Competitive away wins. It feels like 1990s nostalgia repackaged with digital-age polish. Even Ben Iroha, watching from his American perch, declared: “We are gradually going back to the good old days.”
Yet, back home in Akoko, the people are growing restless – not for lack of progress, but for a piece of Elegbeleye’s magic. He was one of them before he was any of this: local government chairman, sports commission boss, legislator, reformer. They remember.
But Elegbeleye isn’t rushing. He is currently lending political and quiet strategic support to Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa, whose sunlit rhetoric needs grounding. Still, the calls persist. The expectation is almost romantic: that Elegbeleye’s calm competence will spill over into roads, schools, jobs – the meat and bone of representation.
Is he under pressure? Undoubtedly. But perhaps it’s the best kind: pressure born not of scandal but of promise. It’s rare in Nigerian politics for someone to be wanted simply because they deliver. And if Elegbeleye does answer the call of Ondo North, it may not be ambition calling – but duty. And in a country starved of examples, that might just be the boldest move of all.
Leave a comment