NGScorecard

Promised to develop a deep sea port on Ondo's coastline to position the state as a maritime and industrial gateway.

Akeredolu signed an MOU in April 2019 with the private office of a member of Dubai's ruling family to develop the estimated $1.4 billion Ilaje deep sea port, and the Buhari administration approved its operating licence in 2023. Construction had not been completed by the time of Akeredolu's death, and the project remained a work in progress years later under his successor.

Promised responsible fiscal management to bring down the huge debt burden inherited from the Mimiko administration.

A state commissioner claimed the administration reduced Ondo's debt from ₦220.58 billion at inception to about ₦92 billion, though this figure was not independently audited, and the state's overall debt profile remained a subject of ongoing public finance concern through his tenure.

Promised to boost Ondo's internally generated revenue to reduce dependence on federal allocations.

NBS-tracked IGR rose from roughly ₦8.68 billion in 2016 to ₦30.14 billion in 2019, before dipping to ₦24.8 billion in the pandemic-hit 2020 and recovering to about ₦32 billion in 2022 — moving Ondo from 22nd to around 11th nationally in IGR rankings.

Sought re-election in 2020 on the strength of his first-term record.

Akeredolu was declared winner of the 10 October 2020 election with 292,830 votes over PDP's Eyitayo Jegede. Jegede's challenge was dismissed at the Tribunal, Court of Appeal, and finally the Supreme Court in July 2021 — though three of the seven Supreme Court justices dissented in Jegede's favour.

Committed broadly to protecting lives and property across the state, including places of worship, amid a national rise in attacks by armed groups.

On 5 June 2022, gunmen attacked St Francis Catholic Church in Owo during a Pentecost Sunday service, killing dozens of worshippers and injuring more than a hundred — one of the deadliest attacks on a place of worship in Nigeria's history, and a severe failure of the security apparatus in the state's own commercial hub.

Implicit in his 2016 campaign was a promise of stable, unified governance for the state.

Relations with his first deputy governor, Agboola Ajayi, broke down publicly; Ajayi defected to the PDP in June 2020 to contest against Akeredolu, prompting the sacking of his aides and a since-abandoned attempt by pro-Akeredolu lawmakers to impeach him before he left office to run against his former boss.

Campaigned in part on cleaning up the fiscal indiscipline associated with the Mimiko era.

In January 2022, Akeredolu signed the Ondo State Public Complaint, Financial Crimes and Anti-Corruption Commission Law, which lawyers for state officials facing federal EFCC fraud charges later cited to argue the EFCC lacked jurisdiction — a court ultimately rejected that argument, but critics viewed the law itself as an attempt to shield state officials from federal anti-graft scrutiny.

Pledged during his 2016 campaign to create 30,000 jobs within his first 100 days in office, a target the opposition dismissed at the time as unrealistic.

No independently verified data confirming delivery of 30,000 jobs within the first 100 days — or close to it — was identified for this entry; the promise is widely remembered as one of the era's more famously unfulfilled campaign pledges.

Implicit duty of care to ensure the machinery of government continued to function transparently, including during any period of the Governor's incapacity.

During Akeredolu's prolonged treatment for leukaemia in 2023, civil society groups alleged the Governor's signature was forged on official documents in his absence, and separately alleged that over ₦300 million in subsidy palliative funds was misappropriated, amid broader reports of roughly ₦7 billion in palliative-fund irregularities during the succession crisis before his death.