I would like to make an announcement. But before I do, let me begin with a reflection.

I sat with my father in his final years, and I listened. He told me stories, as he always had in the precious moments we shared, of the men and women who built this land long before either of us drew breath. He spoke of his values: the ones he lived, rather than merely preached. And he spoke of his vision for Ọyọ: what it could be, what it was owed, and what it still lacked.

He was not a perfect man. He was a man: fallible, human, and yet forever in pursuit of perfection. Perhaps that is what I admired most: not that he never fell, but that he never stopped reaching.

I have turned those hours over in my mind every day since we laid him to rest, not only because I lost a father, though I did, but because in them I finally faced a question I had spent my life avoiding: whose shoulders do I stand on, and what do they ask of me?

The answer humbles me. I stand on the shoulders of people who gave everything in service: over 173 years of it, given to the Nation and, above all, to Ọyọ. When I consider all they gave, I am left holding a debt too large to carry quietly and too sacred to set down.

So, I will not set it down. The call to serve has been rung, and I have chosen to answer it.

It does not mean the seat is owed to a name. No seat is owed to anyone. It means service is owed: by me, to you. To carry his name is not to inherit his praise. It is to inherit his expectation.

Public trust is earned, and never inherited. Every generation must prove itself anew.

This is the plan I will be measured by