Choosing Service Over Self: The Deliberate Path of Kayode Ajulo 

It is easier to spot ambition in Nigeria than restraint. Kayode Ajulo does something stranger: he keeps turning down the obvious stage and walking toward the harder room.

In February 2024, Ajulo became Ondo State’s Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice. He already had the résumé: Senior Advocate of Nigeria, seasoned arbitrator, civil rights lawyer. Abuja, London, or New York would have been the predictable next stop. He chose Akure.

Nothing gives the idea that this decision arrived suddenly. Ajulo’s career has always carried a certain deliberateness. From early union activism at the University of Jos to pro bono cases that rewrote destinies, he built a reputation for legal exactitude paired with moral restlessness.

Meanwhile, his professional range kept widening. Banking law, workers’ rights, arbitration, and public policy. Harvard sharpened the method, while Oxford refined the craft. But his work retained a local inflection, grounded in Nigerian realities rather than imported abstractions. Amazingly, prestige never pulled Ajulo away from the unglamorous fights. In 2021, he helped overturn a death sentence for a teenager accused of stealing a phone.

There were neither cameras nor press conferences; just persistence, filings, and the slow grind of justice.

This same posture defines his public service. As Ondo’s chief law officer, he has focused on structure over spectacle, with administrative moves like anti-land-grabbing legislation and digital court processes.

There is also his quieter influence. As founder of the Egalitarian Mission Africa, Ajulo has freed thousands of inmates through legal intervention. As NBA Mentorship Committee chairman, he shapes younger lawyers with an almost pedagogical patience.

Critics sometimes miss the point. They read restraint as caution. It is closer to ballast. Ajulo understands that institutions outlast personalities. That law, when taken seriously, needs custodians more than crusaders.

What emerges is a figure defined by purposeful understatement. A rooted cosmopolitan, comfortable anywhere, yet choosing to work where friction is highest, and rewards are least immediate.