My Participation

The book is the most comprehensive autobiography in recent time of a statesman of Akande’s national stature and public service experience which spans almost half-a-century. Trained as an accountant, he was employed in his younger days as an executive of British Petroleum, one of the global behemoths dominating the oil industry. He started his involvement in politics as a councilor in Ila-Orangun, Osun State, before he was elected into the Constituent Assembly in 1977, taking part in the historic assignment of preparing the Nigerian Constitution. In 1979 when Chief Bola Ige became the first elected Governor of old Oyo State, he made Akande his Secretary to the State Government, SSG. By 1983, following the rumpus in the ruling Unity Party of Nigeria, UPN, of Oyo State, Akande became Ige’s Deputy Governor.

Akande was one of the hundreds of politicians detained by the military following the collapse of the Second Republic in 1983. Though he regained his freedom in 1985, he vowed never to participate in politics again. However, he soon found himself at the barricade, joining other patriots in the vanguard of opposition to military rule and emerging as the Osun State leader of Afenifere, the mainstream Yoruba cultural and political movement and of the opposition National Democratic Coalition, NADECO. When the military departed in 1999, he became the second elected Governor of Osun State.

My Participations dwells on the author’s years of power and its aftermath. The book explains the byzantine politics and convoluted negotiations that resulted in the formation of the APC and the ultimate triumph of the party in the 2015 general elections.