Gani Adams

From Surulere to Pro-Democracy Activism

Adams was raised in Lagos after his father moved the family there, began school at an army children’s school in Otukpo and finished primary school in Surulere in 1980. After secondary school he trained in furniture-making and interior decoration, completing the course in 1987, and worked for an Italian construction firm in Apapa before leaving to start his own business. He entered the pro-democracy struggle in 1993 after the annulment of the June 12 presidential election, founding the Oodua Youth Movement in support of Abiola, and served that year as public relations officer of the Mushin chapter of the Campaign for Democracy.

Leading the Oodua Peoples Congress

The Oodua Peoples Congress was formed in August 1994, and Adams took over its leadership after the military government jailed its founder, Dr Frederick Fasehun; he became national coordinator in 1999. He has named Fasehun, Gani Fawehinmi and Beko Ransome-Kuti as mentors. In 2000, police declared him wanted over the alleged killing of a divisional police officer in Bariga, Lagos; he was arrested about a year later and held in several prisons. The accounts reviewed describe no trial or conviction.

Becoming the 15th Aare Ona Kakanfo

In 2017, the Alaafin of Oyo, Oba Lamidi Adeyemi, announced Adams as the next Aare Ona Kakanfo, ending a vacancy of about 19 years since Abiola’s death. He was installed on Saturday, January 13, 2018, with the Alaafin performing the traditional rites; at the ceremony Adams said, “I know that so much is expected of me.” He has since described the office as a sacred institution, tracing it, in his own account, to the Alaafin Ajagbo in 1530 and rejecting the idea that holders served short tenures. Those historical claims are his and were not independently verified.

The Olokun Festival

Adams set up the Olokun Festival Foundation in 2002 and is its chief promoter. The festival celebrates Olokun, the Yoruba deity of the sea, and in 2026 reached its 24th edition, with a programme running from a prayer service on October 13 to a beach finale on October 20 at Kakanfo-Falola Beach in Badagry. Organisers expected more than 100,000 guests and over 30 traditional rulers, with contingents announced from Benin, Togo, Ghana, Cote d’Ivoire, France, the United Kingdom, Brazil, the United States and the Caribbean. In the festival announcement he said the beach was developing as a tourism site, with a planned hotel, conference hall and swimming pool, and that the festival generates hundreds of millions of naira a year for the host community; those figures are his own. Reports reviewed contained no coverage of the event itself.

The Rift With Sunday Igboho

In June 2024, Adams’s lawyer sent Sunday Igboho a pre-litigation letter alleging that Igboho had published a private 2021 conversation between Adams and a friend, in breach of his constitutional right to privacy, and demanded a letter of apology while also proposing an amicable settlement. No response from Igboho was reported. In July 2026, Adams criticised the practice of recording and broadcasting security operations before they are completed, saying footage could prompt captors to move or kill hostages and that commanders should be judged by results; the remarks were framed in coverage as aimed at Igboho’s Irun Ekun network, although he did not name it. In August, the groups’ communiqué demanded an end to attacks on Adams, Igboho, Professor Banji Akintoye and other Pan-Yoruba leaders. The working group’s three initial conveners are Adewale Adeoye, Chief Adekunle Adesokan and Alhaji Jubril Ogundimu.

2026 and the Security Debate

On his 56th birthday in May 2026, the Alaafin of Oyo praised him in a statement as a committed fighter and credited his work in promoting Yoruba traditional religion. On August 18, at the Kakanfo Festival in Ifo, Ogun State, he called for Yoruba language teaching in South West universities and the return of History as a school subject, and urged South West governments to work with a security stakeholders group of 16 bodies. On September 3, in a message delivered through Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu, he asked South West governors to consider two proposals he had sent them on insecurity and renewed his call for state police, which he said would end insecurity within six months. The governors had not responded in the reports reviewed.

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