He has run banks in Banjul, fixed budgets in Ibadan and lost an election he insists taught him more than any victory could. Now, at 57, Akim Adebola Yusuf believes his time — and Oyo State’s — has come.

On a humid morning in Oluyole, the conversation around Yusuf does not begin with politics. It begins with a word: Omoluabi. In Yoruba thought, it is the highest compliment one can pay a man—a person of honour, learning, restraint and substance. It is also, his supporters insist, the most accurate description of the man who wants to be the next governor of Oyo State.

Whether the voters agree will be decided in 2027. But few candidates in the emerging field arrive with a résumé quite like his.

From Government College To Kuru
Yusuf’s story is the classic Ibadan arc of merit and ascent. He passed through Government College, Ibadan, finishing in 1984—one of the storied institutions of the old Western Region—before earning a degree in Political Science from the University of Ilorin in 1988. He never stopped studying: a Master’s in Industrial and Labour Relations (Ibadan, 1997), an MBA (Ibadan, 2002), professional certification from the Chartered Institute of Bankers, and, in 2014, admission to the National Institute for Policy and Strategic Studies, Kuru, where he completed Senior Executive Course 36 and earned the coveted mni—the quiet letters worn by Nigeria’s strategic elite.

“Some people prepare for power. He prepared for service,” one associate says. The record bears it out.

A Banker Without Borders
Before he ever asked for a vote, Yusuf was asked to run a bank abroad. From 2009 to 2013, he served as Managing Director/CEO of Skye Bank (Gambia) Limited, leading a full banking operation in foreign territory. In 2019, the system tapped him again as Transition Managing Consultant for Skye Bank (Sierra Leone) Limited. Since 2016, he has served as an Asset Management Partner at AMCON—the corporation charged with resolving the nation’s most troubled financial assets.

It is the kind of career that rarely produces politicians and the kind, his backers argue, that should produce more of them.

“He is not a dabbler in finance. He is an institution-builder.”

The Insider Who Chose The Arena
Critically, Yusuf is no stranger to government itself. Between 2005 and 2007, he sat at the nerve centre of Oyo’s administration as Special Adviser on Due Process, Policy and Budget Implementation to Governor Rashidi Adewolu Ladoja—the man responsible for watching how budgets live or die in execution.

In 2017, he took that discipline to the federal level as Special Adviser (Digital Transformation) to the Honourable Minister for Communication. Long before that, in 2003, he founded The Fortune Group, a good-governance think-tank — evidence, supporters say, of convictions held before ambitions formed.

Honours have followed the work: Justice of the Peace (Oyo State, 2007); Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Bankers of Nigeria (2014); the mni (2014); and an Honorary Doctorate of Science in Public Administration from IBLT University, Lomé, Togo (2023).

Scar Tissue And Staying Power
Then there is 2023 — the election he did not win. Flying the flag of the Action Democratic Party, Yusuf finished 5th of 16 candidates in the Oyo governorship race. Some saw a defeat. His camp saw a proof of concept: an outsider on a minor platform outpolling eleven rivals.

Now, as the governorship candidate of the Nigeria Democratic Congress for 2027, he returns to the arena battle-tested—older in the ways that matter, still young in the ways that count.

The Proposition
At 57, the Oluyole-born technocrat-politician offers Oyo State a rare synthesis: banking and budgeting, state and federal service, West Africa and home. Suave yet substantive, accomplished yet accessible, he is pitching himself as the bridge-builder for a state hungry for governance that is both competent and character-driven.

Whether Omoluabi translates into votes is the question of the season. But in a field too often defined by noise, Akim Adebola Yusuf is betting that substance still counts for something. The campaign begins in earnest.