The African Democratic Congress (ADC) governorship candidate in Lagos, Gbadebo Rhodes-Vivour, has said he will campaign in Yoruba ahead of the 2027 election.
Rhodes-Vivour disclosed this during an interview on Arise TV on Thursday, responding to questions about his inability to speak Yoruba — an issue that dogged his 2023 campaign after he said in an earlier interview that he did not “think in Yoruba.”
The ADC candidate, who ran on the Labour Party platform in 2023, said he had since taken deliberate steps to learn the language, insisting that culture and language remain important to how he engages with Lagos voters.
“This tribal thing, speaking language situation and all that. Yes, culture and language is very important and I’ve gotten a Yoruba teacher, and I’ve learned Yoruba, and I’ll campaign in Yoruba, and that is wonderful,” he said.
He added, however, that the core issues of his campaign would extend beyond language and ethnicity, arguing that Lagos residents face shared challenges regardless of background.
“My passionate interest is to ensure that we have a Lagos that no longer stinks,” he said, citing flooding, housing and traffic as problems affecting all residents alike.
“All of us are going to — when you translate it — all of us are going to hear the smell. Everybody is experiencing the failure of our flooding, of our housing crisis, of the traffic, of the loss of dignity of Lagosians, and that connects all of us, regardless of language,” he said.
Rhodes-Vivour was the Labour Party’s candidate in the 2023 Lagos governorship election, finishing second behind incumbent Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu of the All Progressives Congress.
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