Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour and the power of cultural legitimacy, By Ayodele Adio

From derision to distinction, from propaganda target to cultural icon, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour’s story is no longer about defending identity. It is about embodying it. In 2027, Lagos will be seeking many things in the next leader it elects: competence, compassion and custodian, all of which Gbadebo embodies with grace and humility.

The Cultural Rebirth of Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour

By any measure, the 2023 Lagos State governorship election was not just a contest of policies. It was a referendum on identity. Few candidates have ever been scrutinised as intensely, or caricatured as deliberately, as Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour (GRV). Branded by opponents as “not Lagosian enough,” portrayed as culturally distant, and falsely accused of disparaging his Yoruba heritage, he became the target of a carefully constructed propaganda campaign. The claims were loud, repetitive, and largely untrue. But in politics, repetition often substitutes for evidence, and in 2023, the damage stuck.

What followed over the next 20 months, however, is one of the most remarkable personal and political evolutions in contemporary Lagos history.

Today, the same Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, an MIT-trained architect, urban planner, and technocrat, once framed as aloof from tradition, has emerged as a cultural force. He is now Obalefun of Lagos, a title of deep spiritual and historical resonance. This year, he was also initiated into the Eyo Adimu, assuming a sacred role that places him at the very heart of Lagos’ metaphysical and cultural universe. Historically, the Adimu is the leader of the Eyo procession, guardian of sacred oaths, and keeper of the threshold between worlds.

In a city where history breathes through ritual, this transformation is not cosmetic. It is consequential.

The 2023 election exposed a familiar fault line in Nigerian politics: the use of culture as a weapon rather than a heritage to be protected. Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, despite being a thoroughbred Lagosian by lineage and upbringing, was portrayed as an outsider, too elite, too educated abroad, too modern to understand the soul of the city.

It was an easy story to sell. Lagos is a city experiencing a conscious reawakening of its identity, and the absence of accessible, widely circulated cultural documentation about GRV created a vacuum. Into that vacuum stepped falsehoods: claims that he rejected Yoruba culture, that he disrespected tradition, that he was “Lagos by address, not by essence.” So vile the incumbent was that they went after his mother and wife for being ethnically from the South-east as proof that his blood was tainted.

The stories were mostly untrue, but they were effective.

What made them effective was not evidence, but imbalance. There were few public counterweights, few visible rituals, titles, or traditional affirmations to immediately rebut the narrative. Consequently, as is the case with political propaganda across the world, the perception of the lies created overrode the facts and dealt a serious blow to Gbadebo’s credibility.

But a lot has changed since the election was stolen. Events over the last twenty months have established an immutable fact: Gbadebo’s identity and heritage can no longer be doubted or questioned. And what distinguishes his journey is that it hasn’t been performative. There was no frantic rebranding, no hurried donning of agbada for optics. Instead, there was a deliberate, yet respectful immersion into history, lineage, and living tradition.

Rather than argue with propaganda, he outgrew it.

His conferment as Obalefun of Lagos marked a decisive moment. The title is not ornamental; it is a title that carries profound cultural and spiritual significance in Yorubaland. It represents someone whose leadership, actions, and character bring widespread happiness, prosperity, and positive transformation to their community and beyond. The bearer is expected to be a source of blessing, comfort, and progress to the people. It is not given to strangers, nor to opportunists. It is conferred through recognition and by tradition itself.

Then came the Eyo.

To be initiated into Eyo Adimu is to be written into the spiritual grammar of Lagos. Eyo is not pageantry; it is theology in motion. The Adimu, in particular, symbolises purity, authority, and serves as a bridge between the living, the ancestors, and the unborn. It is a role reserved for those deemed worthy of carrying communal memory and sacred responsibility.

Also, now the Aare Igbale Coker, the Baba Isale of every Egungun in Lagos, Gbadedo carries, on his shoulders, the rich history, pedigree and legacy of the late Justice GB Coker, the prominent Olori Eyo of the Adimu Orisha, the highest position in the Eyo Cultural Masquerade in the chieftaincy system.

For a man once accused of cultural detachment, the irony is profound.

Perhaps the most compelling aspect of Rhodes-Vivour’s evolution is the harmony it reveals between worlds often presented as opposites. He is still an MIT graduate: rigorous, data-driven, and globally exposed. He is still the son of his mother and the husband of Professor Ify. But he is now also something else: a cultural interlocutor, fluent in ritual, symbolism, and the moral language of Lagos history.

In a city forged by trade, migration, resistance, and reinvention, this duality is Lagos itself.

Modern Lagos is not anti-tradition; it is tradition in motion. And Rhodes-Vivour’s journey mirrors that truth. By embracing culture not as nostalgia but as living infrastructure, he has connected with demographics previously distant from technocratic politics: traditional institutions, cultural custodians, market communities, and the informal networks where legitimacy is felt before it is measured.

Politics is ultimately about trust. And culture, in Lagos, is one of the fastest ways trust is earned or lost. The false narratives of 2023 relied on absence, on what people could not see. The reality of 2025 is built on presence. Presence in rites. Presence in history. Presence in communal memory.

This transformation has not only rehabilitated Rhodes-Vivour’s image; it has elevated it. He is no longer merely a candidate with ideas, but a symbol of modern competence anchored in ancestral legitimacy.

As conversations quietly shift toward 2027, one fact is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore: Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour no longer enters the political arena as a man needing to prove he belongs. He belongs.

From derision to distinction, from propaganda target to cultural icon, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour’s story is no longer about defending identity. It is about embodying it. In 2027, Lagos will be seeking many things in the next leader it elects: competence, compassion and custodian, all of which Gbadebo embodies with grace and humility. When they tried to bury him in 2023, they didn’t know he was a seed. That seed has now germinated and is now the man to beat in 2027.

Ayodele Adio is a media and communications strategist.