Oyo tún yá o!
On Saturday, September 5, 2026, the ancient Palace of the Alaafin of Oyo will witness a homecoming almost two centuries in the making. His Imperial Majesty, Oba Abimbola Akeem Owoade I, will formally install Oloye Dr Adesola Kazeem Adeduntan as the Balogun of Oyo
Adeduntan comes to the office with a résumé spanning continents, institutions and sectors. He is founder and Chairman of Sequoia Holdings; Pro-chancellor and Chairman of the Governing Council of Abiola Ajimobi Technical University; former Group Chief Executive Officer of FirstBank and Apesinọla of Ibadanland.
On the eve of the installation, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR, added the weight of the Presidency to the occasion, congratulating him and describing the elevation as “both an honour and a call to greater service”.
The gathering expected in Oyo reflects the breadth of Adeduntan’s life and work. His Imperial Majesty, the Olubadan of Ibadanland, Oba Rashidi Adewolu Ladoja, Arusa I, the 44th Olubadan and chairman of the Oyo State Council of Obas and Chiefs, will lead members of the Olubadan-in-Council to the milestone event.
They will be joined by members of traditional councils across Oyo State, eminent royal fathers from across Yorubaland, senior public officials and leading figures from corporate Nigeria. The financial-services sector will be especially prominent, fitting for a man who, after nearly a decade at the helm of FirstBank, remains one of the industry’s consequential institution-builders.
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Nearly two centuries ago, Adeduntan’s forebears left Oyo-Ile amid the upheavals that led to the desertion of the imperial capital and found a new home in Ibadan. There, the Oriolowo family took root.
Adeduntan was born in Ibadan on May 7, 1969, raised in the city and educated at the University of Ibadan, where he graduated in 1992 with a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree.
His late father, Alhaji Sakariyau Adisa Adeduntan Oriolowo, made sure the story was never forgotten. He taught his son where the family came from, what it meant to be Yoruba, and what the family owed to community, heritage and history.
Now, almost 200 years later, a descendant returns to the source, not merely to look back, but to take up responsibility.
Adeduntan is Oyo by ancestry and Ibadan by birth and formation. He sees the two identities not as contradictions, but as parts of one historical continuum.
The office of Balogun belongs to the deep memory of the Oyo Empire. Once, it represented military leadership, courage, strategy and loyalty to the Alaafin. The cavalry is gone, but the institution endures. Among its distinguished modern holders were Chief Bode Thomas and Dr Victor Omololu Olunloyo, former governor of Oyo State, men who helped redefine the office for civilian life. For Adeduntan, the battlefield has changed.
The adversaries today are poverty, unemployment, poor healthcare, educational disadvantage, insecurity and weak institutions. The tools are education, enterprise, investment, innovation, institution-building and the capacity to bring people together. It is an interpretation of the office that fits the trajectory of his career.
Few Nigerian bankers have travelled quite the same route. After qualifying in Veterinary Medicine, Adeduntan moved into banking and professional services, working at Afribank, Arthur Andersen and KPMG. He qualified as a chartered accountant and later earned an MBA from Cranfield University as a Chevening Scholar.
At Citibank Nigeria, he rose to senior vice-president and chief financial officer. In 2007, he helped build Africa Finance Corporation from the ground up as its pioneer chief financial officer and business manager, contributing to the development of an institution that subsequently attained an investment-grade international credit rating.
In July 2014, he joined FirstBank as an Executive Director and Group Chief financial Officer. In January 2016, at the age of 46, he became the Group Chief Executive Office, the youngest to occupy the office at the time, and, by the end of his tenure in 2024, the longest-serving Chief Executive in FirstBank’s history.
Under his leadership, profit before tax rose from about ₦10 billion in 2015 to more than ₦300 billion in 2023. Customer accounts grew beyond 40 million. Digital users reached 23.2 million. More than 90 per cent of customer-induced transactions migrated to digital channels, while FirstMonie grew into one of Africa’s largest bank-led agency banking networks.
But the numbers tell only part of the story.The deeper work was institutional renewal: strengthening governance and risk management, modernising technology, developing talent, deepening financial inclusion and positioning a bank founded in 1894 for a fundamentally different future.
President Tinubu captured this in his September 4 message, praising Adeduntan’s “far-reaching transformation of one of Nigeria’s oldest and most important financial institutions”.
Two ideas have long guided Adeduntan: The first is that “strategy without execution is hallucination.” The second is that leadership is stewardship: holding an institution in trust, improving what is weak, preserving what is valuable, building what is missing and leaving it stronger for those who come next.
Beyond the balance sheet, one of Adeduntan’s defining strengths is his convening capacity.
Over more than three decades, he has built relationships across business, government, traditional institutions, international finance, academia and philanthropy. He has a rare ability to bring together people, institutions, expertise and capital around a shared purpose. Development often stalls not because ideas are absent, but because the connections are missing: between an idea and capital, between a community and expertise, and between public purpose and private execution.
The old Balogun mobilised warriors. The modern Balogun must mobilise people, networks, expertise and capital in the service of society. This convening capacity may prove to be among the most useful assets Adeduntan brings to the office.
Retirement from FirstBank in 2024 did not mean retreat. As founder and chairman of Sequoia Holdings, he is investing across financial services, strategic minerals and professional services.
Through Sequoia Minerals & Metals, the group is developing a district-scale portfolio of mineral assets. Deliberately, many of those districts bear names drawn from the history of Ibadan and Oyo: Oluyole, Oderinlo, Ibikunle, Ogunmola, Akere, Latoosa, Ajagbo, Ofinran, Ojigi, Abiodun Adegoolu, Atiba Atobatele and Oriolowo.
In this way, even the map of the enterprise becomes a conversation between commerce and heritage.
In 2025, Governor Seyi Makinde appointed Adeduntan pro-chancellor and chairman of the Governing Council of Abiola Ajimobi Technical University, Ibadan. His focus has been on governance, institutional sustainability and closer alignment between technical education and the needs of the economy.
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He has argued consistently that science, technology, engineering and mathematics are not merely academic priorities, but economic imperatives for Nigeria and Africa.
Through the Adesola Adeduntan Foundation, modern Grade A primary healthcare centres are being developed within the palace precincts of the Olubadan of Ibadanland and the Alaafin of Oyo, with both expected to become available to their communities by the first quarter of 2027.
The Foundation also invests in education, particularly STEM, with the objective of expanding opportunity and building capacity for the future.
In May 2019, the late Olubadan of Ibadanland, Oba Saliu Akanmu Adetunji, Aje Ogungunniso I, conferred on him the title of Apesinọla of Ibadanland.
He will now carry both that title and that of Balogun of Oyo.
The presence of Olubadan Ladoja and the Olubadan-in-Council at Saturday’s ceremony gives that duality its proper historical weight.
Oyo is ancestry.
Ibadan is formation.
Together, they tell part of the story of how Yorubaland itself was remade after the upheavals of the nineteenth century.
President Tinubu urged the new Balogun to bring “the same discipline, strategic foresight and commitment to excellence to the service of the Alaafin, the Oyo Kingdom and its people.”
Adeduntan’s own response is characteristically plain:
“This office existed long before Adesola Adeduntan. By the grace of Almighty Allah, it will endure long after me. My responsibility is, therefore, not to possess it, but to serve through it.”
And to the people of Oyo:
“I come not merely to bear your title. I come to serve.”
Nearly two centuries after his forebears journeyed from Oyo-Ile to Ibadan, their descendant returns—not to reclaim history, but to help build what comes next.
From Oyo-Ile to Ibadan, and home again.
Kò burú, kò bàjẹ́, iṣẹ́ aládùn ni! Adesola yóò máa dùn ní. Apesinọla Ibadan! Balogun Oyo! Ayọ̀ ni, yóò máa dùn ní.
No evil, no harm. It is a sweet duty. May Adesola continually find joy in it. Apesinọla of Ibadan! Balogun of Oyo!
The progressive members of the Federation of Ibadan Students’ Union, University of Ibadan—past and present—are particularly proud of one of their own, who once served as the President of the Union and now returns to yet another call to service.
Congratulations and best wishes to the Apesinọla of Ibadanland and the new Balogun of Oyo.
Tunji Oladejo, mnipr, JP, MANUPA, mspsp writes from the University of Ibadan. He is chairman of The Progressive Forum, Ibadan (TPFI), a member of the Board of Trustees of the Bayo and Bimpe Oyero Foundation (BBOF), and a recipient of the 2026 Central Council of Ibadan Indigenes Icon of Ibadan Heritage Award.
