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 he was earning N650,000 a month as governor. He compared that income with the size of the budget he was responsible for and asked how somebody earning about $24,000 a year could preside over a budget of more than $500 million.
“The temptation is just too high,” he said.
He made the same point about permanent secretaries, whose monthly salaries he said were below N500,000, while contractors could approach them with what he described as “big temptations”. Makinde said poor remuneration could be counterproductive to anti-corruption efforts and promised to find a solution to the problem.
It was an unusual argument in Nigerian politics because Makinde was looking at corruption partly through the conditions in which public officials operate.
Paying an official more does not make the official honest. A well-paid official can still steal. But government can hardly pretend that the conditions under which people exercise enormous public power have no bearing on their behaviour.
Makinde was making that point just three months into his administration.
Singapore has built a much more formal system around that thinking. Its political remuneration system is built partly on the belief that government must take incentives seriously. Political leaders are paid against a benchmark linked to private-sector earnings, with part of their remuneration linked to performance.
If government wants people who can earn much more outside politics to serve, it has to think about what it is asking them to give up. It also has to think about the incentives surrounding public office.
Makinde was not making that argument in Singaporean terms in 2019. He was looking at a Nigerian problem in front of him. But the question was similar. What happens when people are given enormous responsibility and access to public resources while their official remuneration bears little relationship to either?
Take his treatment of his predecessor, the late Senator Abiola Ajimobi.
Makinde defeated Ajimobi’s APC in 2019. He had every political reason to distance himself from the previous administration and present his government as a complete break from it. Instead, he acknowledged some of Ajimobi’s achievements and continued with projects he considered useful.
He retained Dr Olusola Akande, appointed by Ajimobi as Executive Secretary of the Oyo State Health Insurance Agency. Akande went on to become one of the notable performers in Oyo State’s health insurance programme.
Makinde also renamed the First Technical University after Ajimobi. He announced the decision at the university’s second convocation in March 2023, after the election rather than during the campaign.
Then there was Adogba Central Mosque.
When the mosque had to give way to the reconstruction of Iwo Road, Makinde went there personally in 2019 to explain the decision. He promised that a new mosque would be built and said he would personally spearhead the financing.
Four years later, the new Adogba Central Mosque was inaugurated by the Sultan of Sokoto. Makinde said the mosque had been built with his personal money.
Some of his development decisions have also been made with the longer term in mind. This can be seen in the attention given to Ibadan Airport and the Airport Road, and in the state’s decision to establish a sovereign wealth fund.
These are decisions whose full value cannot be judged only by what they produce immediately. Roads, transport infrastructure and institutional savings can shape what a state is able to do years after the government that started them has left office.
In August, Makinde did something at Agodi-Gate Market in Ibadan that could easily be missed amid the larger projects of his administration.
Government had decided to end roadside trading in the area. Instead of simply clearing the traders away, Makinde inaugurated 69 lock-up shops, 108 open stalls, a motor park and roads, then directed that the roadside traders be moved into the new facilities free of charge.
Government changed the environment in which those people were doing business without asking them to bear the entire cost of the change.
The government can decide that a practice is no longer acceptable, but the people affected by that decision do not disappear when the rule changes.
Makinde has also shown that party membership does not always determine his political choices.
In the 2023 presidential election, he was a PDP governor and a member of the G5. He did not support Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of his own party. President Bola Tinubu won Oyo State.
Makinde said at the time that his position was based on fairness, justice and equity and on what he believed was best for Nigeria.
Makinde is now running for president on the platform of the Allied Peoples Movement (APM), with Reset Nigeria as his agenda.
He has chosen not to join the ruling APC.
That could cost him politically.
But it gives voters another political option going into 2027.
At the launch of the APM campaign office in Abuja on September 7, Makinde spoke about the need to rethink how Nigeria works. He spoke about petrol pricing, domestic refining, crude allocation, transportation, distribution and the need for government to show Nigerians how prices are arrived at.
I have written critically about some of those arguments. His position on petrol pricing raises legitimate concerns about the assumptions behind the current price structure and whether Nigerians are getting the benefit they should from their own crude.
But the interesting part of Makinde’s intervention is not that he has necessarily found the right answer. It is that he is trying to examine the assumptions beneath a policy that many politicians would prefer to treat as settled.
A serious national economic proposal has to go beyond identifying what is wrong. It has to show how the alternative will work, what it will cost and how it will survive the realities of Nigeria’s institutions and market.
His handling of his own succession in Oyo State provides another test.
The APM has adopted Bimbo Adekanmbi as its governorship candidate. Adekanmbi served as Commissioner for Finance under Ajimobi.
He has also said Adekanmbi should not inherit his enemies and should be allowed to chart his own path. More recently, Makinde said he would not become a political godfather to his successor after leaving office.
Adekanmbi himself has said he will not be Makinde’s stooge.
If those positions are followed through after 2027, they would represent something unusual in Nigerian politics. Many former governors spend years trying to control their successors. They want influence over appointments, contracts and political decisions. They often behave as though leaving office means leaving power only temporarily.
The 2027 presidential contest is already taking shape, with Tinubu, Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi among the leading figures in the race. Makinde’s own presidential prospects are difficult to predict.
Nigeria needs politicians who can build credible alternatives without treating politics as a permanent search for access to government. Democracy becomes weaker when every serious politician eventually crosses over to the party in power and opposition becomes little more than a temporary waiting room.
Makinde has chosen a different path for now.
After more than seven years as governor, I find it increasingly difficult to describe Seyi Makinde simply as a politician.
He has his weaknesses. He has made mistakes, and some of his decisions have been controversial.
The Circular Road project, for example, has faced strong opposition from property owners over demolitions, the size of the road corridor and compensation. His description of the Supreme Court judgment on local government financial autonomy as a “distraction” also drew criticism.
His handling of the state’s traditional institutions has also generated serious controversy. His review of the Chieftaincy Laws and the subsequent reconstitution of the Council of Obas and Chiefs have faced opposition from many traditional rulers and stakeholders, particularly over the powers given to the governor and the structure of the council.
His policies should continue to be tested and challenged.
He often appears to look at what government decisions will make people do, not just what those decisions say.
That is why I see more of a leader than a politician in Seyi Makinde.
Ladigbolu is a journalist based in Lagos.
