Olu Falae 1999 victory over Bola Ige for AD ticket revealed
By: Abudu Olalekan
Chief Olu Falae has opened up about how he clinched the Alliance for Democracy (AD) presidential ticket back in 1999—and beat the late Bola Ige while at it. Not many saw it coming. He says that himself.
In excerpts from his soon-to-be-released autobiography, The Triumph of Grace, Falae walks through the whole thing. The tension, the quiet moves, the politics behind closed doors. It wasn’t luck, he insists. It was work. Strategy too… and maybe a bit of grace.
It started with a 23-member committee set up by Afenifere to pick a consensus candidate for the AD/APP alliance. Governors, party chairmen, elders—the heavyweights were all there. Falae, though, wasn’t exactly pleased with how that committee came together. He says he wasn’t informed early enough. Didn’t get a say in its structure either. Still, he let it slide.
Both he and Ige paid the N500,000 nomination fee. Falae says he submitted his through a bank draft. Ige, according to him, used a post-dated cheque. Small detail, but he mentioned it.
Then came the real work.
Falae didn’t sit back. He moved. Quietly, but deliberately. One by one, he met members of the committee—talked, explained, convinced. No big rallies. Just conversations. Personal ones.
“I went round and saw everybody,” he wrote. Simple as that.
He recalls visiting Chief Adebodun in Kogi—someone known to be close to Ige. Even there, he says, he found an opening. The argument? He (Falae) might be more acceptable in the North. That mattered.
He leaned heavily on his experience too—civil service, banking, government. He had receipts. At one point, he sat with former Education Minister, Chief J.O. Odebiyi, who grilled him on policy ideas. Proper grilling. Falae says he came prepared, armed with his blueprint titled The Way Forward for the Third Republic. He answered every question. Or at least, he believes he did.
Interestingly, he also reached out to people he didn’t expect would support him—close allies of Ige. Names like Archdeacon Emmanuel Alayande and Justice Adewale Thompson came up. He knew the odds there. Still, he showed up. Didn’t want to ignore anyone.
Now here’s where it gets… a bit surprising.
While Falae was doing all this, he claims Bola Ige wasn’t even around. Said he travelled to London during that critical period. No real campaigning. Maybe he felt it was already in the bag.
Big assumption.
A day before the final meeting at D-Rovans Hotel in Ibadan, Falae positioned himself close to the action. Stayed with his cousin. Waited. Watched. You can almost picture the tension.
Then the votes came in.
Ige got nine. Falae got fourteen.
Just like that, it was over.
“I was naturally very happy,” he said. And honestly, you can imagine. Beating someone like Bola Ige? That wasn’t small.
Still, the win didn’t come without noise. There were accusations—claims that money exchanged hands. Falae dismissed them outright. Called them false. Even offensive, especially considering the calibre of people on that committee.
“To think of offering them money would be obscene,” he wrote. Strong words.
He believes part of his victory also came from old political wounds—lingering resentment among some elders over Ige’s past decisions, especially from the 1979 Oyo governorship race. Politics has a long memory. Sometimes too long.
After the win, Falae says he tried to make peace. Sent people to Ige. Eventually met him in Ibadan. For a moment, it seemed things were settling. Ige reportedly agreed to support him, at least in principle.
But that understanding didn’t last.
Not long after, Ige publicly distanced himself from leading Falae’s campaign. The cracks showed. Clearly.
Even so, Falae stands by his version of events. Says it was strategy, persistence… and something more.
“The Yoruba say, bo se wu Olorun lo n sola e,” he wrote. God gives grace as He pleases.
