Some men arrive in history like hurricanes: loud, whirling, imperious. Others, like former Governor Akinwumi Ambode, arrive like rainfall at dawn, steady and soft-footed, nourishing the soil without splashing for praise. He does not seek to be seen, yet everywhere he walks, things grow.
Back when he was Lagos governor, he made no frantic effort to court praise. He simply did the work, quietly, rigorously, and faithfully. As he turns 62, Lagos remembers, Nigeria reflects, and I, too, return in memory to the first time we met, a meeting that left a flame quietly burning at the edge of my recollection, waiting to be stoked again by time.
The first time I met Akinwunmi Ambode, he was not yet governor. He was a candidate then, a man on the cusp of something vast. A mutual friend, Idowu Ajanaku, had arranged the meeting. “You must meet him,” he’d said with the kind of insistence only truth gives birth to. “He’s going to be Lagos governor.” And there he was: calm, collected, clad in simplicity, yet wrapped in a charisma that didn’t shout but lingered.
He received me with a warmth I hadn’t expected, a glow in his smile, an embrace in his handshake. There was something soft-spoken yet sturdy about him, the kind of presence that commands without posturing. He listened more than he spoke. When he did speak, he said with a quiet confidence: “We’ll do a lot together. This journey is just beginning.” I believed him. He meant it.
To emphasise his willingness to work with me, he looked to an aide who was present and instructed him to ensure that his administration constructively engaged with me. But that meeting would be my only encounter with him until he was elected as Lagos’ governor. There would be no encore.
Indeed, life has its rhythms and reroutes. After Ambode won the election, the inevitable gulf of governance widened the distance between us. Our paths diverged. I would think of that moment from time to time.
Then, years later, I met him again. I was invited to an interactive roundtable session with him, now as the Governor of Lagos State. The room was brimming with guests, opinions, egos and hopes. When it was my turn to speak, I rose and introduced myself with a smile and a tinge of nostalgia. Before I could say more, his voice pierced gently through the room: “Where have you been all these years?” He remembered.
I told him I had been around and to that he quipped that he was told I had relocated abroad. Instantly, he turned to one of the members of his cabinet. He stared at him quizzically, asking why he was told that I was unreachable and no longer in the country, while I was in the country. Again, he reiterated his promise and instructed that his aides to ensure his government engaged with me productively.
Although, our meeting was once again sabotaged, that moment was seared in my memory, not because of flattery, but because of what it revealed. Ambode does not forget. He stores encounters like seeds, waiting for the season when they may sprout again. In a world where people discard faces and friendships once they ascend the mountaintop, Ambode remembered mine. That, to me, speaks of the essence of the man.
He remembers people. He honours connections. He sees collaborators, not pawns. He values partnership. His memory is not simply photographic; it is empathetic, anchored in a deep sense of continuity and human worth. That moment said to me: You matter. Few politicians have ever said as much without words.
Beyond the personal, what remains even more enduring is what Ambode did in the space of leadership. His years in office—2015 to 2019—were marked by a flurry of projects that didn’t beg for attention but earned respect. Lagos, a city constantly choking on its own chaos, found in him a steward. He governed with the sharp intuition of an accountant and the soft insight of a man familiar with the pulse of his people.
He left behind not mere monuments, but functioning arteries—roads unclogged, bridges stretched into possibility, street lights woven into the city’s sleepless narrative. The city breathed easier. Epe, his birthplace, glistened under his care. From Oshodi’s chaotic sprawl to the reimagined bus terminals, from the boom of neighbourhood roads to the quiet sophistication of the revamped Alimosho General Hospital, his tenure was more than an experiment—it was execution.
He didn’t raise banners over every achievement. That was never his style. His work often whispered instead of roared. But in the whisper, Lagosians heard results.
What the records don’t always capture is the spirit in which he worked,a sense of duty untouched by the seductions of fanfare. He worked as one born of the soil and loyal to its promise. A patriot, a son of Lagos in every meaning of the phrase, he governed with clean hands and clear eyes.
Some say he was too quiet for politics. Some say he was too pure. But how blessed a state is when its quiet ones lead with integrity, and its pure-hearted sons walk the rugged path of public service without mud on their feet. Ambode did not merely occupy power; he dignified it.
It bears repeating that he held the state’s treasury not as a trophy, but as a trust. His accounting background was not a footnote; it was a foundation. Budgets spoke with clarity. Projects followed process. The smell of scandal never circled him. For four years, Lagos had a leader who preferred outcomes to optics.
Today, as Ambode clocks 62, it is not only the weight of his accomplishments we celebrate, it is the spirit of the man. His compassion is not performative; it is lived. Ask the beneficiaries of his numerous philanthropic gestures, students whose fees he paid, communities he touched in silence, young people given a chance to dream because one man chose to sow without waiting for applause.
He has always carried the posture of service, not entitlement. Even after leaving office, he never clung to relevance like a drowning man to driftwood. He stepped back. He let Lagos breathe. He didn’t jostle for attention. He didn’t protest the silence. That, to me, is statesmanship, knowing when to step forward and when to step away.
And perhaps that is the hardest thing to master in Nigerian politics, to lead and to leave with grace. He was never a man of sound and fury. His is a different kind of legacy, the quiet kind, the kind that history remembers fondly when the noise has died and only the truth remains.
His journey has been shaped by trials too. Few know of his near-death experience on Mount Sinai, where a ghastly bus accident claimed 22 lives, but not his. Or the reckless smash on the Third Mainland Bridge that could have rewritten his story too soon. Grace shielded him, again and again.
These encounters with death gave him depth. Life, to him, is not a performance but a calling. And so, when he speaks, even softly, you listen. Because beneath the soft-spoken cadence is a man who has stared at the edge and chosen to build rather than break.
Ambode is, without a doubt, one of the finest gentlemen to hold public office in Lagos. Yet he walks without noise, works without spectacle, and exits without bitterness. That kind of man is rare. That kind of patriot must be celebrated.
Nigeria owes it to herself to recognise her quiet heroes. Politics may not always have been kind to Ambode, but history will. And today, I rise with that history to say: Thank you.
Thank you for dignifying governance. Thank you for leading with humility. Thank you for remembering people. Thank you for showing that public service can still wear integrity like a well-pressed agbada.
As business leaders, political actors, civil servants and citizens across Nigeria look back, they must draw inspiration from the Ambode years, not because they were perfect, but because they were earnest, deliberate, and worthy of emulation.
So as the sun rises on your 62nd year, I say again with reverence: Happy birthday, Your Excellency. The flame you lit in Lagos still flickers with memory. The bridges you built still carry the footsteps of gratitude. The handshakes you gave still linger in warmth.
And the man I met that day before power came knocking, the one who looked me in the eye and said, “We’ll do great things together,” is still, undoubtedly, the man worth celebrating today.
May your days ahead be as bright as the streetlights you gave to Lagos. May your legacy rise like the skyline you reimagined. And may history, in its sober fairness, inscribe your name with gold across the ledger of our time.
Happy 62nd, Akinwunmi Ambode. Statesman. Patriot. Gentleman. Lagos’ quiet lion
