By Peter Aliyu
In many ways, Owolabi Adetutu stands out in the galaxy of sons and daughters of Akoko Edo today, not because she is now the talk of all APC members across the entire local government but that she is young, suave, accessible and easy going.
She is humane, she is motherly and exudes a compassionate confidence and an aura of purposefulness that is rare among many like her: successful in her career, yet determined to make a mark that is rooted in culture, courtesy and humility.
You need not be clairvoyant to tell that Akoko Edo is in dire need of fresh breath after eight years of deliberate suffocation. And who will bail the cat?
Here is Adetutu. Young, energetic, urbane, cerebral and unassuming yet well wired. Her robust academic resume, uncanny strides and exploits despite her short sojourn in the world firmly project her as the breath of fresh air the local government urgently needs.
Adetutu has not said she is aspiring to any public office. But she is a member of the All Progressives Congress, APC. For a personality who connects seamlessly with the Akoko Edo people she knows where it pinches the people.
And so when the yuletide beckoned last year she did not need second thoughts to reach out with over 100 bags of rice and 20 cows for the leaders and members of the party in the locality to celebrate and be merry.
It was not the gift that was timely but the timing as many were already giving up on ways and means to procure these basic necessities to make the annual festivities memorable. But Adetutu cleared all their doubts.
Tutu, as she is affectionately called by admirers, is a hard-boiled entrepreneur and has dedicated much of the few decades of her life garnering and putting together all the experiences she has acquired in and out of the healthcare world.
A thinker who thinks outside the box, visionary and purpose-driven, Adetutu rises above the fray to stamp competency and accomplishment.
Adetutu is not your janu-faced everyday person. She is a straight talker who speaks the language of service delivery. She comes across as a woman of unadulterated zeal for enduring positivity.
She look like one who is adequately prepared for the task of restoring hope to her local government. She comes with a message of redemption for the Akoko Edo that positively resonates with them.
Starting silently as a young goal- getting care giver, this woman who is a trained and certified Nurse, a pharmacist and a public health practitioner, having attended some of the finest of colleges in the USA, is on the line for the PH.D in nursing soon.
As 2023 beckons, Akoko Edo is on the look out for a compassionate, shrewd, and cerebral manager of time, opportunities and resources rather than a perpetuation of a past that is dark, and anachronistic in policking.
Adetutu represents the former. In her, American author John C Maxwell’s characterization of a leader takes flesh and blood. Maxwell said, “A leader knows the way, goes the way and shows the way”.#