40 is often called the age of clarity, but for Olamijuwonlo “Lamiju” Akala, it feels more like the age of acceleration. The son of a governor who once bestrode Oyo State politics, Lamiju now occupies his own seat of consequence in Abuja’s House of Representatives.
There was a time when sceptics muttered about his surname. Political royalty, they said, but untested. Yet the young Akala refused to play the ornamental heir. From his days as caretaker chairman of Ogbomoso North in 2017 to winning the substantive chairmanship in 2018, he showed a knack for converting doubt into proof.
Today, as representative for Ogbomoso North, South, and Orire Federal Constituency, he carries more than a family legacy. He chairs the House Committee on Youths in Parliament, giving him a megaphone for one of Nigeria’s most restless demographics. Leadership here is not ceremonial. It is a strategy, a negotiation, and a constant balancing act.
Education helped shape that balance. A degree in Computer and Information Science from Lead City University, followed by a master’s in Service Management from Buckingham, gave him polish. But it is his ability to weld classroom theory to local anxieties that makes him resonate in town halls and plenary sessions alike.
Recently, Lamiju has reached beyond politics’ predictable rituals. Through his Ojuoloore Educational Support Fund, he distributed over 300 free JAMB forms to students in Ogbomoso around March, coming after he empowered some of the most promising of his constituents with tech skills and laptops as a way to boost digital literacy and human capital development.
These are all small gestures, yes. However, they are gestures that peel away a financial barrier, invite new dreams into the university gates, and draw wings on the shoulders of beneficiaries. At 40, Lamiju straddles two worlds: the memory of his father’s towering shadow and the emerging glow of his own profile. Critics may still linger on the sidelines, but his journey suggests persistence is its own quiet rebuttal.
And so, Lamiju’s story continues, not as a footnote to a governor’s legacy, but as a stanza in Nigeria’s ongoing political song. The question now is whether the chorus ahead will carry his name more loudly than his father’s.
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