By Olutayo Irantiola
…served meritoriously, mentored wholeheartedly and retiring with honour
Mrs Mulikat Adejoke Agboola is a distinguished Tourism Administrator in the Civil Service of Oyo State, Nigeria, with a career spanning three decades of dedicated public service. A trailblazer in her field, she has left an enduring mark on the cultural and tourism landscape of Oyo State.
Mulikat Adejoke’s academic foundation was laid at Okeho Iganna Grammar School in Okeho, Oyo State, where she obtained her West African Secondary School Certificate in 1984. She went on to pursue higher education at the University of Ilorin, one of Nigeria’s foremost federal universities, where she earned a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Performing Arts in 1993.
This grounding in the arts would prove formative, shaping both her professional identity and her lifelong passion for tourism, culture, heritage, and the creative industries.
The Okeho-born professional began her civil service career in September 1996 as a Cultural Officer II with the Oyo State Council for Arts and Culture in Ibadan, where she served until 2007. During this period, she participated in arts and cultural programmes across the state and directed documentation and research efforts on cultural heritage, work that helped preserve and systematize. Oyo State’s rich cultural memory for future generations.
In 2007, Mulikat Adejoke was seconded to the Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism, where she served as Deputy Director (Culture) until 2013. In this role, she was responsible for managing cultural policy programmes and driving departmental initiatives, deepening her expertise at the intersection of governance and cultural administration.
The defining chapter of her career began in 2013, when she joined the Ministry of Culture and Tourism as a Tourism Officer. Her appointment coincided with a watershed moment in Oyo State’s administrative history: The establishment of a dedicated Department of Tourism within the ministry.
Mulikat Adejoke was the first person to hold the position of Tourism Officer within this new department, and she later rose to become its pioneer Director of Tourism at Grade Level 17, a post she held before her appointment as a General Manager in the Oyo State Civil Service.
As Director of Tourism, she has been responsible for overseeing the formulation and implementation of tourism policy across the state, making her a foundational figure in the institutionalisation of tourism governance in Oyo State.
Throughout her career, she has demonstrated strong continuous professional development. She has a commitment to participate in an impressive range of national and international training programmes and workshops. These include Study Tours of tourism operations in The Gambia (2013), which broadened her comparative understanding of tourism management in African contexts. She has also attended National Workshops on Nigerian Domestic Tourism and on Repositioning Nigerian Cultural Workers, as well as specialised training courses in computer operations and applications.
Her professional development extends to governance and ethics, having completed training in Work Ethics and Productivity in the Public Service and a course in Fraud Prevention, Detection and Control through ASCON.
Most recently, she participated in the Stakeholders Validation of the Draft National Tourism Policy (November 2024) and the UNWTO Global Conference on Linking Tourism, Culture and Creative Industries (November 2022), reflecting her engagement with global conversations on the evolving roles of tourism and culture in economic development.
In recognition of her exceptional contributions to public service, Mulikat was honoured with the Oyo State Award of Excellence in Service in 2023, a testament to the impact and integrity she has brought to her work over the decades.
Mulikat Adejoke is a member of the Institute for Tourism Professionals of Nigeria (ITPN) and the Association of Tourism Practitioners of Nigeria (ATPN).
Agboola Mulikat Adejoke stands as a pioneering figure in Oyo State tourism administration, a public servant whose vision, perseverance, and Institutional courage helped build, from the ground up, a dedicated framework for tourism development in Oyo State.
She is happily married to her husband, Adekunle Sikiru Agboola, a.k.a. Beloumi, and the marriage is blessed with beautiful children.
She recently retired with honour from the Oyo State Civil Service.
