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O'datiwa Media, Ikeja G.R.A (2026)

07/10/2026

PHOTO NEWS

Ondo State Governor Dr Lucky Orimisan Aiyedatiwa FCA visited the scene where the Nigerian Aircraft got crashed at Igbokoda, Ilaje LG.

The visit is aimed at ensuring on-spot assessment and getting first hand information about the aircrash which culminated in the death of 32 Passengers on board.

However, the Governor was accompanied by the Deputy Governor, Dr.Olayide Adelami and other top Government Functionaries from the State Capital. Ilaje LG Chairman Hon.Maurice Oripenaye, Odigbo Local Government Chairman, Hon Taiwo Adegoroye, Okitipupa Local Government Chairman, Andrew Ogunsakin part of the entourage that accompanied the Governor to the location.

O'DATIWA MEDIA TEAM

06/10/2026

AYEDATIWA'S SECURITY RESOLVE IS PAYING OFF IN ONDO

For any government, the first duty is to protect lives and property. In Ondo State, that duty is being matched by results.

This week, a Joint Task Force of Nigerian Army troops, operatives of the Department of State Services and personnel of the Western Nigeria Security Network, Amotekun Corps, eliminated a senior ISWAP commander, Abdussamad Ohida, also known as Anwar, in Owo forest.

Several other members of the group were reportedly killed in the same operation. The Nigerian Army has confirmed it.

According to security sources cited by the state government, Ohida was a former deputy to the group's Central Nigeria leader and took on a leadership role across parts of North Central and southern Nigeria after his superior's arrest in 2023. The same sources say he was planning major attacks in parts of the South, including attacks on civilians during the coming festive period.

Whatever he was planning, he will not carry it out.

This did not happen by accident. Governor Hon. Lucky Orimisan Aiyedatiwa has made security a defining priority of his administration. His message to criminal elements has been clear: Ondo State is not a safe haven for kidnappers, terrorists or anyone who threatens the peace of its people. Behind that message is a firm expectation that security agencies must find these elements and root them out of the state's forests and hideouts.

The Owo operation shows that expectation being met. In his reaction, the governor praised the agencies for acting on credible intelligence.

He said the operation "underscores the importance of inter agency cooperation, intelligence sharing and proactive security measures in confronting emerging security threats."

That is a sound approach. The Army, the DSS and Amotekun each bring something different. The military brings firepower and discipline, the DSS brings intelligence, and Amotekun brings knowledge of local terrain and communities. When they work as one, criminals have fewer places to hide. A state government that supports this cooperation, rather than letting agencies work in isolation, gets results like this one.

The governor did not stop at applause. He urged the agencies to sustain the momentum and stay vigilant, and he assured them of the state government's continued support. He also reaffirmed his administration's commitment to the safety of residents, visitors and businesses across Ondo State. This matters because security is not won in a single operation. It takes constant pressure on criminal networks, steady intelligence work and a government that does not lose focus after a headline victory.

The benefits go beyond one operation. Farmers need to reach their farms without fear. Traders need safe roads. Investors need confidence that their businesses will not be threatened. Families need to celebrate the festive season without dread.

A government that protects these things is laying the ground for the state's growth.

Ondo people should recognise and support this progress. The war against insecurity needs vigilant citizens who share credible information with the authorities, and communities that refuse to shelter criminals. The state government and the security agencies cannot do it alone.

The removal of a dangerous commander and the disruption of his alleged plans send a message to everyone who still thinks Ondo's forests are a safe base for crime.

Under Governor Aiyedatiwa, the state is taking the fight to them.

✍️O'DATIWA MEDIA TEAM

Ebenezer Adeniyan
Adefuwa Yetunde

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04/10/2026

Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa remains the leader and number one citizen of Ondo state. Says President Bola Ahmed Tinubu

O'datiwa Media Team

02/10/2026

NEW HANDS ON OLD SOIL: AYEDATIWA'S BET ON YOUNG FARMERS TO SECURE ONDO'S FUTURE

Agriculture in much of Nigeria carries an unspoken demographic crisis: the average farmer is ageing, and the next generation has largely looked elsewhere; toward cities, white-collar ambitions, and professions seen as more dignified than tilling the family farm.

Governor Hon. Lucky Orimisan Aiyedatiwa administration is wagering that this trend is not inevitable, investing directly in training young Ondo residents to see agriculture not as a fallback, but as a genuine career.

The clearest evidence of this effort is the disclosed figure from the administration's own 18-month review: more than 500 youths have been trained and empowered in modern agricultural practices. This detail came from Chief Press Secretary Prince Ebenezer Adeniyan, as part of a broader account of the administration's progress on power, agriculture, and industrialisation.

The specificity of the number matters. Youth empowerment is a phrase often used loosely in government communications, but a disclosed figure of over 500 trained individuals gives the claim something to be measured against, and signals that this was conceived as a defined programme with trackable participation, not a vague aspiration.

The emphasis on modern agricultural practices is itself significant. For generations, agriculture in Nigeria has often been passed down informally, children learning farming techniques from parents and grandparents, with methods that, while rooted in genuine expertise, have not always kept pace with advances in yield optimization, pest management, or processing technology. By explicitly framing this initiative around modern practices, the administration is positioning agriculture as a field where formal training and updated technique can meaningfully improve outcomes, not simply inherited labour, but a skill set worth deliberately investing in.
This reframing matters for how young people perceive farming as a career option. A sector associated with modern techniques, technology, and structured training carries a different appeal than one perceived purely as manual, subsistence-level work with limited upward mobility.

This youth empowerment effort does not exist as an isolated initiative, it sits within a web of complementary investments the administration has made across agriculture. The 203-Ward Agricultural Programme, which maps out farmers, cooperatives, and production clusters at the community level, provides the structural framework into which newly trained young farmers can be integrated. The distribution of over two million cocoa seedlings and the inauguration of the Ondo State Cocoa Revolution and Management Board offer tangible crops and institutions for trained youths to engage with. And the administration's emphasis on processing value locally, ensuring that what Ondo State produces is increasingly processed within the state creates exactly the kind of higher-value, technology-oriented roles that are more likely to retain young talent in agriculture rather than losing them to migration toward cities or other sectors.

In this sense, the 500-plus trained youths represent human capital feeding into infrastructure the administration has been simultaneously building land, institutions, and market access designed to give newly skilled young farmers somewhere productive to apply what they have learned.

Youth agricultural training addresses a problem that compounds quietly over time if left unaddressed. Every year that passes without a new generation of farmers entering the sector is a year closer to a demographic cliff of ageing farmers retiring or passing on without successors to inherit their land, expertise, and productive capacity. Food security strategies built on land acquisition and capital investment, however well-funded, ultimately depend on having people equipped and willing to work that land for decades to come.

By investing in training now, the administration is attempting to secure not just this year's harvest, but the pipeline of farmers who will determine Ondo State's agricultural output a decade or two from now, a far less immediately visible achievement than a road commissioning or a seedling distribution event, but arguably one of the more consequential long-term bets in the administration's agricultural agenda.

If Ondo State's broader agricultural revival from cocoa seedlings to secured hectares to farm-to-market infrastructure is to outlast any single administration, it will need the human capital to sustain it. The training and empowerment of more than 500 young farmers represents the administration's most direct attempt to ensure that the next generation is not merely inheriting Ondo State's agricultural legacy by default, but choosing to carry it forward by design.

O'DATIWA MEDIA TEAM

Ebenezer Adeniyan

01/10/2026

HAPPY 66TH INDEPENDENCE DAY CELEBRATION

Today, October 1st 2026, mark the 66th independent day of our great nation Nigeria.

We extend profound commendation to the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, His Excellency, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu GCFR, whose visionary leadership and commitment to the Renewed Hope Agenda continue to inspire our march toward prosperity.

We equally commend His Excellency, Dr. Hon. Lucky Orimisan Aiyedatiwa FCA, Governor of Ondo State, whose purposeful leadership and governance remain a beacon of progress in our dear Sunshine State.

Today reminds us of our shared history, our strength in diversity, and our collective responsibility to build a more peaceful, united, and prosperous Nigeria.

As we step into a new month, may October bring renewed hope, greater opportunities, peace, progress, and abundant blessings to every home.

May God continue to bless Ondo State, and bless our beloved Nigeria.

O'DATIWA MEDIA TEAM

30/09/2026

THE MISSING LINKS: HOW AYEDATIWA IS BUILDING THE BRIDGE BETWEEN ONDO'S FARMS AND IT'S MARKETS

A bumper harvest means little to a farmer who cannot get it to market before it spoils. This is the uncomfortable truth that has quietly undermined agricultural potential across much of Nigeria for decades and it is the exact problem Governor Hon. Lucky Orimisan Aiyedatiwa singled out when he identified power, water, storage, and markets as the necessary connective infrastructure standing between Ondo State's farms and genuine food security.

Naming the Real Bottleneck

Speaking at the FirstBank Agric and Export Expo 2026 in Lagos, Governor Aiyedatiwa was candid about where agricultural value is actually lost. He identified power, water, storage, and markets as essential to reducing post-harvest losses and connecting farmers with buyers, a diagnosis that moves the conversation beyond the more familiar focus on planting and production alone.

This distinction matters. Nigeria's agricultural challenges are frequently framed around what farmers grow; seedlings, fertilizer, land access. Far less attention typically goes to what happens after the harvest: whether produce can be stored without spoiling, whether it can be processed to extend its shelf life, and whether it can physically reach a buyer before it rots in transit. By naming these post-harvest factors explicitly, the administration is addressing the stage of the agricultural chain where Nigerian farmers have historically lost the most value.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the administration's rural road investments work that, while distinct from agricultural policy on paper, functions as its essential circulatory system in practice. Rural road projects like the Aiyegunle–Iwaro Oka Road, along with the broader 18-LGA road mandate requiring a minimum stretch of new construction in every local government area, directly determine whether a farmer's cassava, cocoa, or cassava can reach a market while still viable for sale.

A processing facility or storage hub built without a passable road to reach it is infrastructure that exists on paper but fails farmers in practice. Viewed this way, road construction across rural Ondo State is not merely a transportation achievement, it is agricultural infrastructure in its own right, quietly determining the ceiling of what farmers can actually earn from what they grow.

Infrastructure alone cannot solve the farm-to-market problem if farmers are too afraid to work their land in the first place. Governor Aiyedatiwa has been explicit on this point, describing insecurity as a major challenge to agricultural expansion and disclosing that the government is mobilising home-grown security outfits and collaborating with other security agencies specifically to protect farmers and their farms.

This links directly to the administration's broader security record. the arrests of suspected kidnappers, and community engagement efforts in agrarian communities like Imafon and Igushin. Farmers who fear abduction or attack on their own land will not expand production regardless of how much storage or road infrastructure exists nearby. Security, in this sense, is not a separate achievement running parallel to agriculture, it is a precondition for it.

The governor has also pointed to land as a deliberate area of reform, noting that steps are being taken to improve access for agricultural production and investment while protecting existing communities. This complements the state's broader land banking efforts including the 26,000 hectares secured for agricultural development, by addressing not just how much land is available, but how accessible that land is to the farmers and investors who might productively use it.

Among the elements Governor Aiyedatiwa named, power, water, and storage receive the least public attention, yet they are arguably the most decisive in determining whether a harvest becomes income or waste. Reliable power enables cold storage and processing facilities to function. Water access determines both crop yield and the viability of irrigation during dry spells. Storage infrastructure is what allows farmers to hold produce until prices are favourable, rather than selling in distress immediately after harvest simply because there is nowhere to keep it.

These are rarely the infrastructure projects that generate commissioning ceremonies or dramatic headlines. But their absence is precisely what has historically trapped many Nigerian farmers in cycles of post-harvest loss and distress selling, regardless of how much they manage to produce.

What distinguishes this aspect of the Aiyedatiwa administration's agricultural agenda is its implicit acknowledgment that farming success is rarely determined by farming policy alone. Roads, security, land access, power, water, and storage each sit under different ministries and budget lines, yet each one directly shapes whether Ondo State's agricultural ambitions, from cocoa revival to the 203-Ward Agricultural Programme actually translate into food on tables and income in farmers' pockets.

By naming these connective infrastructure gaps explicitly, rather than treating agriculture as a siloed sector, the administration has signalled an understanding that food security in Ondo State will ultimately be won or lost not just in the fields, but in the roads, warehouses, and power lines that determine whether what grows there ever reaches the people who need it.

O'DATIWA MEDIA TEAM

Ebenezer Adeniyan

Odusola

Enny
Adefuwa Yetunde

29/09/2026

GROUND ZERO: HOW AIYEDATIWA IS LAYING THE LAND AND CAPITAL FOUNDATIONS FOR FOOD SECURITY IN ONDO STATE

Every food security strategy eventually confronts two unglamorous but unavoidable questions: where will the food be grown, and who will pay for it to happen at scale? At the Gani Fawehinmi Freedom Arcade in Akure, during Nigeria's 65th Independence Anniversary celebrations, Governor Hon. Lucky Orimisan Aiyedatiwa offered Ondo State's answer to both a substantial land bank and a dedicated multi-billion-naira investment designed to turn food security from aspiration into infrastructure.

26,000 Hectares: A Land Bank for the Future
The first pillar of this announcement was land and a considerable amount of it. The governor disclosed that the state had already secured 26,000 hectares of land earmarked for agricultural development. In a country where land access remains one of the most persistent barriers to scaling commercial agriculture tangled in competing claims, unclear titling, and community negotiations. Securing land at this scale represents genuine groundwork rather than a policy statement alone.

Land of this magnitude matters because it determines the ceiling of what any food security programme can ultimately achieve. Seedlings, funding, and technical support all depend on having enough cultivable land to deploy them at meaningful scale. By front-loading this land acquisition, the administration has positioned itself to expand agricultural production well beyond what smallholder farms operating on fragmented plots could achieve alone.

Alongside the land, Governor Aiyedatiwa earmarked ₦7.5 billion specifically to strengthen food security and create jobs in the state. This figure is notable for its specificity a dedicated food security allocation rather than an amount folded anonymously into a broader agricultural budget line. Dedicating capital explicitly to food security signals that the administration views the objective not merely as a subset of general agricultural policy, but as a distinct priority worth its own budget identity and public accountability.
The pairing of jobs with food security in the same announcement is also deliberate. Large-scale agricultural development on newly secured land does not simply produce food, it demands labour, from land preparation and planting to harvesting, processing, and logistics. A ₦7.5 billion investment tied explicitly to both outcomes suggests the administration is treating agricultural expansion as a dual-purpose engine: filling granaries and creating livelihoods simultaneously.

The setting of this announcement carried its own significance. Speaking during Nigeria's Independence Day celebrations, the governor situated Ondo's food security push within a broader account of his administration delivering visible results across health, education, agriculture, infrastructure, and security — with a promise of greater progress ahead. Independence Day addresses in Nigeria often serve as informal scorecards, moments when governments account for the year's progress against the backdrop of national reflection. Choosing this occasion to unveil the food security plan lent it a weight beyond a routine agricultural briefing.

The food security investment was explicitly linked to the administration's broader OUR EASE policy framework, the governance philosophy underpinning much of Aiyedatiwa's development agenda across sectors. This positioning matters: it frames food security not as a standalone agricultural programme, but as one expression of a wider strategy aimed at economic growth, job creation, and improved living conditions for residents.

For a state pursuing simultaneous investments in roads, education, and security, tying food security into this same overarching framework suggests an attempt at policy coherence treating agricultural land and capital as infrastructure every bit as foundational as the roads and institutions covered elsewhere in the administration's development record.

Securing land and earmarking capital are necessary first steps.
For a state working to secure its food future, that combination of ground and capital is where every serious food security strategy has to begin.

O'DATIWA MEDIA TEAM

28/09/2026

SUNSHINE STATE, GOLDEN CROP: AIYEDATIWA'S BID TO RESTORE ONDO'S COCOA GLORY

There was a time when cocoa was not just a crop in Ondo State, it was an identity. The very nickname "Sunshine State" traces its roots to an era when cocoa farms carpeted the landscape and cocoa wealth built towns, funded education, and shaped the region's place in Nigeria's economic story. In recent decades, that legacy dimmed under the weight of ageing farms, declining yields, and a generation of farmers with no clear succession plan.

Governor Hon. Lucky Orimisan Aiyedatiwa administration is now making a deliberate bet that cocoa's golden era in Ondo State does not have to remain history.
The most immediate and visible expression of this effort is scale. The administration has distributed more than two million cocoa seedlings across the state, a figure the governor cited directly alongside livestock disease prevention programmes and other agricultural interventions during remarks at the FirstBank Agric and Export Expo 2026 in Lagos.

Seedling distribution on this scale is not a minor gesture, cocoa trees take years to mature and begin fruiting, meaning a seedling programme of this magnitude represents a long-horizon investment. It is, in effect, a bet on Ondo's agricultural future planted years before its full returns will be visible, a signal that the administration is thinking beyond the immediate news cycle toward a sustained rebuilding of the state's cocoa base.

Seedlings alone do not revive an industry, institutions do. Recognising this, the administration inaugurated the Ondo State Cocoa Revolution and Management Board, a dedicated body established specifically to strengthen the state's position in cocoa production and management. The creation of a standalone board signals that cocoa is being treated not as one crop among many in a general agricultural policy, but as a strategic priority warranting its own institutional architecture, coordination, oversight, and presumably a pipeline for extension services, quality control, and market linkages.

This kind of dedicated institutional focus matters in a sector where Nigeria has historically lagged behind cocoa-producing peers like Ghana and Côte d'Ivoire, in part due to fragmented, under-coordinated support systems for farmers.

Central to Governor Aiyedatiwa's cocoa vision is a rejection of the status quo in which Ondo State and Nigeria more broadly exports primarily raw, unprocessed cocoa beans while the far greater value of chocolate and cocoa derivatives is captured elsewhere. Speaking at the Lagos expo, themed "From Farm to Global Markets: Building Nigeria's Export Value Chain," the governor was explicit about this ambition: the work produced in Ondo State should be increasingly processed within the state, creating jobs locally and allowing the state to compete confidently in markets across Nigeria and around the world.

This processing ambition, if realized, would represent a fundamental shift in how cocoa wealth is captured. Raw beans sold at commodity prices generate a fraction of the value that processed cocoa products; butter, powder, liquor, and finished chocolate command on global markets. Positioning Ondo to capture more of that value chain domestically would mean more jobs, more retained revenue, and a cocoa economy less vulnerable to raw commodity price swings dictated by international markets.

*The 203-Ward Framework: Cocoa's Local Foundation*
This cocoa strategy does not exist in isolation. It sits within the administration's broader 203-Ward Agricultural Programme, an approach designed to identify what each of the state's 203 political wards produces, who its farmers and cooperatives are, and what specific infrastructure and interventions each location requires. For a crop like cocoa, historically concentrated in particular belts of the state, this ward-level granularity allows the government to direct seedlings, extension support, and Cocoa Board resources precisely where cocoa farming clusters already exist or could be revived, rather than distributing support indiscriminately across the state.

Confronting the Obstacles Head-On
To his credit, Governor Aiyedatiwa has not presented cocoa revival as a simple story of seedlings and institutions alone. He has openly acknowledged that insecurity remains a major challenge to agricultural expansion, stating that the government is mobilising home-grown security outfits and collaborating with other security agencies to protect farmers and their farms, a direct link between the administration's security investments and its agricultural ambitions. He has also pointed to land access as a deliberate area of reform, alongside the need for power, water, storage, and market infrastructure to reduce post-harvest losses and connect farmers to buyers.
This candour about the barriers facing cocoa farmers rather than glossing over them suggests a strategy grounded in the practical realities small holder cocoa farmers actually face, not just the aspirational language of revival.

Cocoa's return to prominence in Ondo State will not be measured in a single budget cycle or news announcement, trees planted today will take years to reach full productivity, and processing infrastructure will take time to build out. But between the seedling distribution, the dedicated Cocoa Board, the export-oriented processing vision, and the ward-level targeting designed to reach farmers where they actually are, the Aiyedatiwa administration has assembled the components of a genuine long-term cocoa strategy; one that treats Ondo's most historic crop not as a nostalgic symbol, but as unfinished economic business worth investing in again.

O'DATIWA MEDIA TEAM

25/09/2026

Ondo State Governor Dr Lucky Orimisan Aiyedatiwa recently approved an exclusive scholarship and bursary support for the son of the late student leader, Comrade Mary Ogunga.

O'datiwa Media Team

24/09/2026

ONDO ASUU TO CALL OFF STRIKE AS GOVERNOR DIRECTS PAYMENT OF ALL AGREED ENTITLEMENTS; STUDENTS TO RESUME SOONEST.

The Ondo State chapter of the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU) is set to call off its ongoing strike after the state government reached agreements with the union on all outstanding issues.

According to information from a reliable source, the breakthrough followed the governor Hon. Lucky Orimisan Aiyedatiwa directive for the immediate payment of all agreed entitlements to the striking lecturers.

The union is expected to formally announce the suspension of the strike, paving the way for academic activities to resume on campuses across the state.

The development brings relief to students, parents and stakeholders who had been worried about the disruption of the academic calendar.

The governor's intervention is being widely commended as a demonstration of his commitment to education and industrial harmony in the state.

Stakeholders have also urged the union and the government to sustain the spirit of dialogue to avoid future disputes.

Students are advised to prepare to resume academic activities.

Further details are expected once the union issues its official statement.

O'datiwa Media Team

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