By Dimeji Sodeke-There is a contradiction sitting quietly at the heart of Ogun State, and it deserves to be spoken about plainly. Ogun is not an ordinary Nigerian state. It carries an educational inheritance that few states in the federation can claim. It is a state whose history is deeply intertwined with the story of education in Nigeria, a place that inherited the intellectual tradition of the old Western Region and the educational philosophy associated with Chief Obafemi Awolowo. Before Ogun State itself was created in 1976, that tradition had already established education as one of the most powerful instruments through which a society could transform its people.
Awolowo’s government in the old Western Region introduced free primary education in 1955 and pursued an ambitious expansion of access to education. The significance of that experiment was not simply the number of classrooms constructed or the fees removed. It was the idea behind it: that the mind of a child was worth investing in, and that the progress of society depended upon the quality of people it produced. Ogun inherited that legacy.
The question now is whether we are still treating it as a legacy worth protecting, or whether, somewhere along the way, we have begun to confuse popularity with excellence and visibility with value.
Long before “human capital development” became a familiar phrase in government speeches, the old Western Region had demonstrated what could happen when education was treated as a serious instrument of development. Education was not merely something government provided because it had to be. It was a deliberate investment in the future. That philosophy matters to Ogun because the state did not emerge from nowhere. When it was created from the old Western State in 1976, it inherited a population and institutions shaped by that broader educational tradition.
It is therefore difficult to look at Ogun today without asking what happened to the old reverence for intellectual achievement. We have built universities. We have polytechnics. We have colleges of education. We have schools spread across communities. We have young people graduating every year with degrees, diplomas, certificates and professional qualifications. But what happens after the certificate? What happens to the first-class graduate? What happens to the young researcher whose discovery could solve a problem but who has no funding? What happens to the writer who produces a book of genuine literary value? What happens to the inventor who has an idea but lacks the connections to move it from a notebook into a laboratory?
These questions become more important when we consider what government chooses to celebrate.
Move the clock forward to 2020. Olamilekan Agbelesebioba, popularly known as Laycon, won Big Brother Naija. His victory turned him into a national celebrity almost overnight. Ogun State celebrated him. Governor Dapo Abiodun’s administration appointed him a Youth Ambassador and announced a ₦5 million gift and a three-bedroom bungalow for him.
Let me be careful here. This is not an argument against Laycon. He did nothing wrong by winning a reality television competition. He did nothing wrong by accepting the recognition that came with it. Entertainment is an industry. Popular culture is part of modern society. Young people who distinguish themselves in entertainment deserve opportunities and recognition.
But government rewards are never merely private transactions between government and recipient. They send messages. They tell society what matters. They tell young people what kind of achievement can attract the attention of those in power.
And that is where the Laycon story becomes uncomfortable.
Imagine being a young student in Ogun and watching the celebration. You see a young man become famous, and the state responds with a house, money and a public appointment. There is nothing wrong with that. But the same student may also wonder what happens when the achievement is academic, scientific, literary or inventive.
What is the equivalent excitement reserved for the young Ogun indigene who graduates with first-class honours? Where is the public theatre for the researcher whose work could transform agriculture? Where is the state-backed platform for the scientist developing a medical solution? Where is the serious recognition for the author whose book takes Ogun’s name beyond Nigeria?
The issue is not that Laycon was rewarded. The issue is what is rewarded with equal seriousness.
There is a danger in a society where recognition follows visibility more easily than it follows value. The young person who becomes famous is easy to notice. The young person who spends three years researching a problem in obscurity is not. The singer has an audience. The researcher may have only a supervisor and a handful of colleagues. The celebrity has social media. The inventor may have a prototype sitting inside a small workshop. The author may have a manuscript that nobody has yet bothered to read.
Yet some of the quietest people in society are working on the things that eventually determine how loudly the rest of us live.
This is why I believe the conversation must move beyond rewarding achievement to rewarding the kinds of achievement that build society. Ogun should not have to choose between entertainment and intellectualism. It should be capable of celebrating both. But if we have limited public resources, attention and symbolic capital, then we must ask ourselves what kind of behaviour we are encouraging. Are we encouraging young people to become famous, or are we encouraging them to become useful? Are we rewarding what attracts the crowd, or are we also rewarding what advances knowledge? Are we celebrating those who are already visible, or are we deliberately searching for the brilliant young people who are still hidden?
These are not the same thing.
A columnist must be honest enough to acknowledge what does not fit his argument. Ogun has not completely abandoned academic excellence. The state has supported scholarships and bursaries, recognised academic laureates and invested in education infrastructure and digital learning. Government budget documents have also identified support for outstanding students and interventions in tertiary institutions among its education priorities. There have also been recent examples of direct academic recognition. In 2026, Governor Abiodun awarded a combined ₦11 million to the best graduating undergraduate and postgraduate students of Babcock University.
These things matter. They should be acknowledged. But acknowledging them does not end the conversation. Because the question is not simply whether Ogun gives money to academically successful people. The question is what scale of recognition, what level of public attention and what institutional support does intellectual excellence receive?
There is a difference between giving a student a reward and building a culture around excellence. One recognises an individual. The other inspires a generation. A cheque presented quietly at a convocation may mean a great deal to the recipient. But a highly publicised government honour can do something else: it can tell thousands of young people watching that this is the kind of achievement their society considers worthy of admiration.
That is why symbolism matters. Government is not only spending money when it gives an award. It is also spending influence.
I write this from a place that is not entirely theoretical. I am an award-winning author. My work has travelled beyond the borders of this state. Yet I have also experienced the frustration of trying to have my literary work recognised within the very environment from which I come.
A book can win recognition elsewhere and still encounter a wall of bureaucracy at home. That contradiction is difficult to explain to a young person. How do you tell a young writer that his society values literature when his own work can be celebrated outside the state but struggle to find institutional recognition within it? How do you tell a researcher that innovation matters when the journey from discovery to institutional support can feel longer than the journey from obscurity to abandonment?
This is not about me. It is about the young people coming after me.
The young writer in a remote community may never have an international publisher. The young scientist may never meet the person who can fund his research. The first-class graduate may never become a social-media sensation. The inventor may never have the opportunity to explain his idea to a government official.
What happens to them? Must they first become famous somewhere else before Ogun discovers that they are valuable?
That is the question I cannot easily dismiss.
The conversation must also return to the state of education itself. Quality education cannot be measured simply by how many schools a government has constructed. A classroom is important. A functioning school is important. Digital infrastructure is important. But education ultimately has to produce people capable of thinking, questioning, creating and solving problems.
The true test of an education system is not only how many students it produces. It is what those students are capable of producing. Can they think independently? Can they conduct research? Can they create? Can they innovate? Can they solve problems that their communities have lived with for decades? Can they turn knowledge into value?
If education is reduced to the pursuit of certificates, then we have missed the point. Ogun’s educational legacy deserves more than a celebration during anniversaries and speeches. It deserves a renewed commitment to the quality of the minds being produced.
The lesson is not uniquely Nigerian. South Korea’s transformation from post-war poverty into a technology-driven economy was accompanied by sustained investment in education, skills, infrastructure, industry and research. Singapore, with limited natural resources, made education, skills and human capital central to its transformation into a knowledge-intensive economy. Finland built a highly respected and selective teaching profession and placed substantial emphasis on teacher preparation and educational quality.
None of these countries became successful simply because they told their young people to study. They built systems around knowledge. They connected education to economic opportunity. They invested in research. They respected expertise. They created pathways through which talent could become productive.
That is the part Ogun should be looking at. Not the surface. Not the glamour. Not the statistics for the sake of statistics. The system.
Because genius without an ecosystem is often just wasted potential.
This is where the responsibility of the next administration begins. Ogun needs to move beyond occasional gestures and build a deliberate culture of rewarding intellectual excellence.
Why can there not be an annual Ogun Genius Award, an award that recognises scientists, researchers, authors, inventors, teachers, innovators and exceptional graduates—not because they are politically connected, but because their work has demonstrated genuine merit?
Why can there not be an Ogun Innovation Fund, properly structured to give young innovators access to grants, mentorship, laboratories and professional support so that good ideas do not die simply because the people who conceived them lack money or connections?
Why can there not be an Ogun Intellectual Hall of Fame, a public record of the scholars, scientists, writers, educators, researchers and innovators who have contributed to the development of the state and the country?
Why should an Ogun child know the name of every celebrity who has appeared on television but struggle to name an Ogun-born scientist? Why should the state know how to celebrate a person after fame has already found them but struggle to find brilliant young people before the rest of the world does?
This is where leadership matters. A government does not merely administer. It sets priorities. It decides what receives attention. It decides what gets funding. It decides whose achievement becomes a public story. And by doing so, it helps shape the ambitions of an entire generation.
The greatest danger facing Ogun is not that it celebrates entertainers. The danger is that we may gradually create a generation that believes being famous is more important than being excellent.
There is a difference.
Fame is visibility. Excellence is substance. Fame can arrive overnight. Excellence may take decades. Fame can fill a stadium. Excellence can change an industry. And sometimes the person who receives the loudest applause is not the person whose work will matter most when the applause has stopped.
Ogun should understand this better than most places. It comes from a tradition in which education was once considered powerful enough to transform an entire society. That tradition should not become a museum piece.
We should not tell our children that education is important and then show them, through our actions, that popularity is what ultimately receives the grandest rewards. We should not ask a young person to spend years studying science and then make him wonder why society has more excitement for someone who became famous in a few months. We should not tell young writers that books matter while allowing bureaucracy to become the first obstacle they encounter when they try to bring those books into the institutions that should be promoting reading. We should not tell young innovators that Nigeria needs their ideas while leaving them to finance innovation from their pockets.
Ogun does not need to stop celebrating entertainment. It needs to start celebrating intelligence with equal confidence.
It needs to make the scientist visible, the teacher respected, the researcher supported, the writer heard, the inventor funded, the first-class graduate remembered and the brilliant student encouraged.
Because when government rewards something, young people notice. When society celebrates something, young people aspire to it. And if we truly want Ogun to remain a state of intellectual consequence, then the message must be clear: genius is not a side attraction. Innovation is not a luxury. Intellectual excellence is not an afterthought.
They are part of the foundation on which the future of the state must be built.
Ogun has an extraordinary educational inheritance. The question is not whether we inherited it. We did. The question is whether we have been worthy custodians of it.
Because the future of Ogun will not be determined only by the number of houses we build, the number of celebrities we produce, or the number of ceremonies we hold. It will be determined by what happens inside the minds of the young people growing up here; what they are taught to admire, what they are encouraged to pursue, what they believe is worth sacrificing for, and ultimately, what kind of excellence they believe their society is prepared to reward.
Ogun once helped teach Nigeria how to value the mind.
It is time to teach that lesson again.
Not by rewarding mediocrity over genius, but by making genius impossible to ignore.
