As a member of the Egba council, he was a leading participant in negotiations with the Lagos State colonial government in 1889 for the rights to construct railway tracks passing through Egbaland.

He trained as a printer under J. Bagan Benjamin in 1888 and later joined John Payne Jackson of the Lagos Weekly Record.

[3] While in Lagos, he made acquaintances with personalities such as George W. Johnson, a prominent Egba native and advisor to the Alake Gbadebo I, Balogun Majekodunmi, an Ogboni member and Richard Beale Blaize.

Ademola who had spent the larger part of his life in Lagos became a broker in the development of relationship between Egba chiefs and Governor Henry McCallum.

[citation needed] The new government system consisted of the Alake as head, the three other Egba Obas as members, and the chiefs who held the title of Seriki, Olori Parakoyi, Apena, and Balogun of Christians.

Ademola then took to farming as an occupation but the government system which he had supported in Abeokuta gained little popularity among the residents partly because of a new poll tax.

He was a modern prince who wore English clothes in Lagos and who had followed Gbadebo to England to visit Edward VII.

He also continued with public works in Abeokuta and gained support from the British colonial administration as head of the Native Authority.

Ransome Kuti opened a complaints office to receive grievances against the police and native authority officials, two bodies under the control of the Alake.

Before the colonial policy of indirect rule, women in Abeokuta had enjoyed some form of representation in government and were not taxed directly.

[5] From 1946 to 1948, the union led intermittent protests against the taxation of women, lack of female representation in the Native Authority, war era policies such as quotas and against some of Ademola's business interests.