Iya Ilu (the mother of drums) in Yorubaland does not sound easily, or in vain. It only does, when great things happen.

It is an instrument not only for heralding big events, but one that inflames the adrenaline in the people and rouses them to instant celebration, because the drum is hardly beaten for negative purposes.

When the people of Ondo State heard it yesterday, they knew the meaning. It could not have been for a different purpose.

So, from Akure to Okitipupa, Ore to Ile-Oluji, they spilled onto the streets. The people of Okeigbo, Owo, Ikare, Ondo, Ijare, and Idanre heard too. To them, it was also the same message. Those in the villages abandoned their farms, others their places of business. Workers pushed away their files to join in the celebration that took over the land.

They did not have to pause to ask the reason for the festivity. Even the little child knew, because it is a matter for which many families had lost sleep in the past two years or so; which had caused bile to well up in them; for which Christians and Muslims had conducted different prayer and fasting sessions, and for which Ifa priests had communed with the gods in incantations and sacrifices.

This is the culmination of it all, the meeting of their expectations and the realisation of their dreams. The end of bad dreams. They no longer need to wince each time they hear the sirens, which compel them to leave the road for a king they did not crown, and whose authority came from distant lands.

The people no longer need to go to sleep and wake up the next day feeling the same emptiness that comes from the fact that they were not part of what is happening around them; that confines them to mere onlookers as their commonwealth is distributed; that confines their feelings to the dustbin and coerces them to stoic silence - knowing the result of any form of open protest would be more devastating than the gains they would hope to achieve, especially as the king and those who crowned him appeared ready to top their conquest by drinking with their skulls.

They knew that they did not vote for Olusegun Kokumo Agagu, but Olusegun Rahman Mimiko, on April 14, 2007, despite the similarity in their names. Yet, just like an army of occupation, Agagu had been forced on them ever since. But that has effectively come to an end. Now, they have their mandate restored and there is joy in the land.

It came via the intervention of the wise men in the neighbouring Edo State, where five Justices of the Court of Appeal affirmed Mimiko as the winner of the election, the same verdict given by the lower tribunal that ruled on it last year.

But this had come after a tortuous journey by Mimiko, former Minister of Housing and Urban Development; a journey strewn with stumps, landmines and barricades, which prevented the manifestation of the affinity he had enjoyed with the people, but which he appeared determined to conquer.

In fact, Mimiko, to underscore this determination, had to confront the much-dreaded monumental terror machinery of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, under whom he served as a Minister.

Reports had it that Obasanjo had warned him not to contest the 2007 election, and even threatened to send after him the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), then a rampaging attack dog of Obasanjo.

This was despite Obasanjo's personal experience of Mimiko's popularity in the state.

The former President had been confronted by motley crowds chanting Iroko at every turn while on visits in the state, despite the fact that Agagu was his host; a situation said to have put Agagu in a fix. All these clear signals from the people were, however, brushed aside as Obasanjo was determined to have his way, as usual.

Yet Mimiko, apparently imbued by the knowledge of his standing with the people, did not balk. He not only fought Obasanjo and his ubiquitous Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) machinery on the battlefield on election day, but in the courts also, where it took the combination of the fervent energies of his lawyers and a just Judge, not only to give him and his people the justice they sought, but to cement the affinity they have enjoyed these past years.

Again, it took another landmark words of the President of the Appeal Court, Justice Umaru Abdullahi, who appears to have established himself in the minds of many Nigerians as an upright Jurist to do so.

Indeed, Abdullahi seems to have also established himself as the nightmare of election riggers in the Benin division of the Appeal Court. He had earlier sat on the case that sent Agagu's counterpart in Edo State, Osarheimen Osunbor, packing for the same reason of electoral fraud.

Dismissing the 207 grounds of appeal - distilled into 12 filed by Agagu against the verdict of the tribunal - Abdullahi, in a unanimous decision, held that Mimiko, having satisfied Sections 21 and 39 of the Electoral Act, should be returned and sworn in immediately.

That has since been done, thus opening another chapter in the annals of history, not only in Ondo State, but in Nigeria's political lexicon.

To many analysts, Monday's development has added yet another plank to the democratic platform, which is fast being nailed together by some forces in the land intent on saving its practice in Nigeria from the dangerous plunge it has taken since the exit of the military almost a decade ago, especially in the last years of Obasanjo.

Even with the PDP still striding a large chunk of the political landscape, many have argued that the addition of Ondo on the list of states the ruling party has lost, may be the beginning of the steady climb to sound democratic ethos which have made Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Benin Republic the toast of the world from Africa.

Wole Olanipekun, counsel to Mimiko, seemed to allude to the contributions of the likes of Abdullahi in building this platform, in his reply to Monday's judgement.

"When you delivered the Oshiomhole judgment I said it is the best. This judgment is the very best of the very best. It has become the catechism of all judicial authorities.

"You have carried out a revolution but you might not know. It is redemption of our democracy. The Court of Appeal has never been greater than it is today," Olanipekun said.

There is no doubt that a fresh chapter of political history is gradually opening here. How far it does depends on what happens in the coming months when other cases in court are decided.

Nigerians are watching. And so is the rest of the world.