Oyo voters have shown that political endorsements do not necessarily determine how they vote.
The 2019 governorship election provided one example. The 2023 election provided another. The 2027 contest will test how much influence political structures and their leading figures have over voters.
Seyi Makinde’s 2019 victory was an exception to the established political route to the Agodi Government House.
His political history was not insignificant. He had contested elections before and had moved through different political platforms.
But in 2019 he was not the candidate of the governing establishment and did not inherit the machinery of the incumbent administration.
His victory followed the coming together of opposition political forces that had previously pursued separate ambitions. Rashidi Ladoja (a former governor of Oyo State and now the Olubadan of Ibadan) played a central role in that arrangement, while other leading aspirants, including Olufemi Lanlehin, Sharafadeen Alli and Bolaji Ayorinde, stepped aside in support of Makinde.
Makinde went on to defeat the APC candidate, Adebayo Adelabu, polling 515,621 votes against Adelabu’s 357,982. The Supreme Court later affirmed his election.
Four years later, the political circumstances had changed.
The coalition that had helped bring Makinde to power was no longer intact. Ladoja backed Teslim Folarin of the APC against the governor in 2023.
Makinde nevertheless won 31 of Oyo’s 33 local government areas and polled 563,756 votes. Folarin received 256,685 votes.
That result does not mean that Ladoja or other political figures had become irrelevant. It demonstrates something narrower and measurable. Their political influence did not automatically translate into control of the electorate.
The 2023 result provides a useful counterpoint to the 2019 coalition. Political alliances can help determine who gets into the contest, but the electorate retains the capacity to produce a result that does not follow the preference of every influential political actor.
Adekanmbi is not a political newcomer. He served in the administration of the late Abiola Ajimobi as Deputy Chief of Staff and later as Commissioner for Finance, Budget and Planning. He subsequently returned to public service under Makinde and was appointed chairman of the committee working on the upgrade of Ibadan Airport. His professional background is in accounting, finance and consulting.
His emergence as a potential successor also did not begin with the APM ticket.
In March 2026, Makinde’s advisory council was tasked with engaging PDP governorship aspirants ahead of the 2027 election. Nine aspirants, including Adekanmbi, appeared before the council. The chairman of the council specifically said the exercise was not a screening process but an interaction intended to understand the aspirants’ plans for the state.
The process later moved outside the PDP. Adekanmbi became the APM’s consensus governorship candidate in May 2026 after the party adopted him at its governorship primary.
At Adekanmbi’s unveiling as the APM consensus candidate, the governor urged him not to inherit his political enemies but to chart his own path.
Makinde subsequently said he would not become a political godfather to his successor or interfere in the governance of Oyo after leaving office.
Adekanmbi has made a similar claim from his own side. In September, he said he was not Makinde’s surrogate, that he had his own manifesto and strategy, and that he would take responsibility for his decisions if elected.
Those commitments can only be tested in government.
Makinde’s first victory broke with a familiar route to power in Oyo. His second showed that the withdrawal of important political support did not necessarily take the electorate with it.
Adekanmbi now introduces a different proposition. His political career has crossed administrations, having served under both Ajimobi and Makinde. He emerged from consultations involving other prospective successors and says he would operate with his own manifesto and take responsibility for his decisions.
If voters repeatedly choose candidates on the basis of their records, programmes and capacity rather than simply following the preferences of political patrons, then the 2019 Makinde experience ceases to look like an isolated exception.
It becomes evidence of a broader political pattern.
For Adekanmbi, the 2027 election will therefore test more than succession from one administration to another. It will test whether a candidate can emerge from an existing political structure without being permanently defined by that structure.
Repeated elections of this kind would give Oyo voters greater influence over who governs the state.
The route to Agodi Government House would depend less on who an influential politician chooses and more on whether voters accept the candidate placed before them.
That is how an exception may become a rule.
Ladigbolu is a journalist based in Lagos.
