Opinion

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....

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I have found Governor Seyi Makinde increasingly difficult to assess within the familiar Nigerian political mould. No governor, president or politician can be expected to get everything right. Governance is too complicated for that. Different groups have different interests. Some of those interests are legitimate. Some will conflict with others. Every government has to make choices, and every choice will disappoint somebody. What stands out to me is the thinking behind some of those decisions. Very early in his first term, Makinde made an argument about government remuneration that went beyond the usual complaint about workers being poorly paid. In August 2019, while addressing newly sworn-in commissioners, he disclosed that...

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If you check out the decibels of noise politicians have generated around the 2027 election right from mid last year, you will think that by now the streets would be...