Honourable Member representing Ojomu Balogun Constituency and Chairman House Committee on Health & Nutrition at the Kwara State House of Assembly, Ogbeni Seun Ogunniyi condole with the family of His Excellency Senator Chief Cornelius Olatunji Adebayo CON. Chief CO Adebayo was a University don and a distinguished political figure that served our beloved Kwara State and the nation with uncommon commitment and distinction at different times in the evolution of our democratic institution before the commencement of the second republic in 1979 up to the early part of the fourth republic in the mid-2000.
Chief CO Adebayo, who died at the age of 84 years, was at one time the Commissioner for Education and also later Commissioner for Information and Economic Development in Kwara State during the military regime between 1975 and 1978. He went on to be elected as a Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria in 1979 and later contested and won the Kwara State governorship election in 1983. Unfortunately, that political dispensation was cut short by the military coup of 31 December 1983. His record of active public service resumed at the start of the fourth republic, when under President Olusegun Obasanjo, he was appointed Federal Minister and assigned the following portfolios namely: Communication, Works & Housing, and Transport at different times during Obasanjo’s Presidency.
Chief CO, as he was fondly called during his lifetime, was one of the brilliantly shining lights of progressive politics in Kwara and Nigeria during the dark reign of the military junta. He was a stalwart of the United Party of Nigeria (UPN), and many years later played an active role in the pro-democratic movement of NADECO opposing military rule in the country. Ogbeni Seun Ogunniyi heartily commiserates with the family of late Chief CO Adebayo, among which includes Mrs. Toyosi Adebayo-Thomas, Kwara State Commissioner for Livestock Development, and Engr. Olusegun Adebayo, Director General NALDA, the people of his home town — Oke Onigbin, Isin Local Government where he hails from and indeed the people of Kwara State. Ogbeni Ogunniyi prays for the peaceful repose of his soul and that God grants the family he left behind, his friends, associates, and well-wishers the fortitude to bear the painful loss.
