By Abiola Olatunde Aloba
I thought GRV might be the alternative. I genuinely did.
Young. Well Educated. Articulate? A product of MIT, one of the world’s most celebrated institutions of learning. An architect. A new-generation politician. A man who has already tasted the bitter theatre of Lagos politics &, having come 2nd in 2023, has had 4 years to reflect, regroup & reinvent himself. Surely, I thought, this time around, there would be fireworks.
There would be ideas. There would be intellectual audacity.
There would be that youthful electricity that makes you sit up & say: Ah! So this is what the next generation has brought to the table.
But, honestly? I am still waiting. And that, for me, is the problem.
Every time I encounter Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, not personally, but through interviews, television appearances & public engagements, I find myself waiting for that moment.
That wow moment. That sentence that stops you in your tracks. That idea so fresh & so compelling that you immediately want to hear more.
That vision that makes you temporarily forget the political party behind the candidate & simply focus on the possibility of what a different Lagos might look like. But it hasn’t happened. At least, not yet.
Instead, the dominant public image I keep seeing is one that is, frankly, grim.
And before anyone from his PR, branding or communications team begins preparing a sophisticated explanation for that, let me say this: I don’t buy it. Yes, Lagos has problems. Yes, governance is serious business.
Yes, the traffic is maddening, the flooding is painful, housing is a crisis for many & there are parts of Lagos where the environment can hardly be described as befitting a city that wants to call itself a global megacity.
But must a man who wants to govern Lagos look perpetually burdened by the weight of the world?Leadership is not only about identifying what is wrong.
It is also about making people believe that what is wrong can be made right. There is a difference.
A governor is not merely a professional problem detector. A governor must be a carrier of possibility.
Hamzat may not exactly be the youthful, disruptive alternative I had imagined. But he represents continuity, experience & a political establishment that has been deeply embedded in Lagos governance for years. He is also fantastically brilliant & went to great schools too.
The APC’s Lagos GAC adopted him as its consensus governorship candidate in April 2026, & he has since formally entered the race. And therein lies the irony.
I was hoping for a contest that would force everybody to raise their game.
A contest in which the old establishment would be compelled to defend its record against an opposition armed with irresistible ideas.
A contest in which the younger candidate would say: “You have had your turn. Here is what we will do differently.”
And the establishment would respond: “Fine. Here is what we have achieved, here is what we have learnt, & here is why our next chapter will be better.”
Now that would be an election worth staying awake for. That would be a battle of ideas. That would be political theatre at its finest.
Instead, I find myself looking at the field & wondering whether the opposition has yet produced the candidate capable of creating that electricity.
And that is a shame.
Because Lagos deserves better than an election that becomes merely another ritual of political procession.
Lagos deserves intellectual combat. It deserves competing visions.
It deserves candidates who can walk into the same room, sit opposite each other & make Nigerians argue passionately over policy, development, infrastructure, education, healthcare, transportation, housing, technology & the future of the city.
I want a candidate to make me angry. Another to make me reconsider. Another to make me excited. And ultimately, I want Lagosians to have to think before they vote.
That is what democracy should do at its best.
So, GRV, this is not me writing you off. Quite the opposite. This is me challenging you.
You are young. You are well educated. You have been here before. You have had 4 years to prepare. You have been given another political platform.
You have an opportunity to convince people who were not convinced in 2023.
I want a governor who can govern Lagos brilliantly in any language.
I want the Yoruba. I want the English. I want the numbers. I want the blueprint. I want the execution. I want the imagination. I want the how.
Because saying Lagos stinks is easy. Lagosians already know.
Saying Lagos has traffic is easy. Everyone who has spent 2 hours crawling from Lekki to VI knows.
Saying flooding is a problem is hardly a revelation to the person whose house has taken in floodwater. The politician’s job begins where the complaint ends.
Tell us how. That is where the real contest should be.
And perhaps this is where my disappointment with GRV becomes particularly acute.
I wanted him to be the totem pole of youthful political vibrancy. I wanted him to make the older political establishment uncomfortable, not through noise, but through ideas.
I wanted him to walk into a tv studio & make the interviewer work overtime because there was simply too much intellectual material to unpack.
I wanted him to make Lagosians say: “This is different.” Instead, I sometimes find myself asking: Where is the difference?
Could it be that we have simply changed the face without changing the political vocabulary?
Could it be that we have taken the old political template, put a younger man inside it, & called it a new alternative?
That would be terribly disappointing.
And before the GRV faithful descend on me, let me make one thing abundantly clear: This is not an attack on his age, education or right to contest.
Nor am I suggesting that a tv interview is a complete measure of anybody’s capacity to govern.
Indeed, GRV has presented other ideas & arguments in longer-form interviews & political engagements, including discussions around Lagos’ finances, governance structures, corruption & long-term development. His campaign will have ample opportunity to put those ideas before the electorate.
But politics is also communication. If you cannot make people feel the possibility of your future, how do you expect them to abandon the familiarity of their present?
And that brings us to the elephant in the room. Dr. Obafemi Kadri Hamzat.
And that is what I have been looking for from GRV. I expected the youthfulness to show.
Not necessarily in jumping around or cracking jokes, but in the freshness of thought. In the audacity of ideas. In the ability to look at a problem that has existed for decades & say: “Everybody has been looking at this from the wrong angle. This is how I intend to solve it.”
That is the kind of youth I was expecting. Not merely youth in age. Youth in imagination. And perhaps my expectations became even higher because of MIT.
If you tell me that someone attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, one of the world’s foremost universities for science, technology & innovation, I am entitled to expect some intellectual fireworks. I want to hear something that makes me wonder why the people before him didn’t think of it.
I want to hear how technology can radically transform Lagos transportation. I want to hear a properly thought-through solution to flooding.
I want to hear how housing can be made dramatically more accessible without turning government into a landlord for everybody.
I want to hear how Lagos can build an integrated transport system that actually makes people leave their cars at home.
I want to hear how artificial intelligence, data, smart infrastructure & private capital can be deployed to make government work better.
I want to hear how the enormous informal economy can be brought into a more productive relationship with government.
I want to hear what he intends to do with the extraordinary talent & energy of Lagos’ young population. I want to be dazzled.
Instead, one of the most talked-about moments from his latest tv appearance was his declaration that he has learnt Yoruba & can now campaign in the language.
To be fair, language & culture matter. GRV said he engaged a Yoruba teacher & has improved his ability to speak the language, even responding in Yoruba during the interview. He also identified flooding, housing & traffic as major concerns affecting Lagosians.
Good. Wonderful.
But forgive me if I ask: Is that really the best we have got? Because I don’t want a governor who can merely campaign in Yoruba.
So please, give us something. Don’t just tell us what is wrong with Lagos.
Tell us what you see that the rest of us cannot see. Don’t merely tell us Lagos stinks. Tell us how you intend to make it smell better.
Don’t merely tell us there is traffic. Show us the architecture of movement you have designed for a city of more than 20 million people.
Don’t just tell us there is a housing crisis. Show us the mathematics.
Don’t just speak about the youth. Show us the economic engine you intend to build for them.
And don’t merely learn Yoruba. Give us the language of a new Lagos. Because, personally, I am still waiting for the moment when you make me say: “Now, this is the alternative.”
Until then, forgive me. I am unimpressed.
And perhaps that is precisely what will make the GRV camp angry enough to prove me wrong.
If so, I will gladly take the correction. Because ultimately, this is bigger than GRV. It is bigger than Hamzat.
It is bigger than APC, ADC, PDP or any other political acronym. It is about Lagos. And Lagos deserves an election that excites us. An election that challenges us.
An election that gives us something serious to argue about over dinner, on tv, in offices, at the barbershop, in beer parlours & across social media.
Not an election whose outcome appears to have been written in invisible ink long before the voters arrive.
Give us a contest. Give us ideas. Give us vision. Give us a reason to sit forward.
Lagos is watching.
