When it started, it was like a marathon destined never to end, one petition folding into another, hearings layered on hearings. Yet last week in Abuja, the Supreme Court brought the music to a close. Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa remains the undisputed steward of Ondo State.
The drama’s final act came not with fiery argument but with withdrawal. Agboola Ajayi, the former deputy governor and PDP’s candidate, abandoned his appeal. His lawyers told the justices he had consulted widely and chose peace over persistence. The panel, led by Justice Inyang Okoro, nodded and dismissed.
It was not only Ajayi. The Social Democratic Party’s flagbearer, Bamidele Akingboye, had already fallen silent, his case withdrawn after his passing. The Allied Peoples Movement candidate followed suit. What began as a crowded chorus of challenges shrank to a hush in the wood-panelled courtroom.
For Aiyedatiwa, this was the final clearing of storm clouds. He had won emphatically in November 2024, sweeping all 18 local government areas with 366,781 votes, a historic clean sweep. Tribunals upheld it. The Court of Appeal affirmed it. Now the highest bench has sealed it.
Attorney General Olukayode Ajulo offered perhaps the warmest gloss, calling Ajayi’s retreat an act of maturity and patriotism. He reminded observers that he had urged his “brother” to let go months ago, to redirect energy from the gavel to governance. In his telling, that advice has finally landed.
The case, though, was never just about personalities. It tested once more the architecture of Nigeria’s democracy: whether mandates pronounced at ballot boxes can be endlessly relitigated, whether legal sparring should slow the work of roads, schools, and hospitals. Ondo’s answer now seems fixed.
What remains is less courtroom spectacle, more everyday labour. The ball is now in Aiyedatiwa’s court to govern a restless oil-rich state, whose citizens are impatient for dividends and positive change.
