The Loneliness Of Power: Seyi Makinde And The Friends He Lost | Olatunji Awe
There’s an old Yoruba saying that the road to the top is crowded but the summit is a lonely place. Few serving governors in Nigeria’s Southwest today are as starkly and more painfully honest as Engr. Seyi Makinde, the two-term governor of Oyo State. A man who rose to power riding the high horse of powerful allies, a huge coalition and good relations with all sides, and a whole lot of common ground and goodwill, Makinde is now in the final moments of his reign in the very last months, amid political foes and enemies of friends who were once his neighbours. The story of how he got here is a story of betrayal. It’s a story of choices and the cost of each one.
The coalition that created him and what broke him.
When Makinde won the governorship election in 2019, it was nothing short of a political miracle. Oyo State was a fiercely fought space, and yet this PDP candidate won one of the best political achievements in Southwest history and it was backed by a rainbow coalition of aggrieved politicians, influential business players, market leaders, grassroots activists and national heavyweights. The coalition was not one based on ideology. It was built on shared interest, close-knit relationships and a collective desire to topple an incumbent. Makinde was the vehicle. The passengers were many. And passengers, as history has long shown, always want a destination that suits them. The problem with coalition politics in Nigeria is that it works like a business deal and once the deal is complete and once the election is won the invoice comes in. Each ally presents their bill: appointments, contracts, political relevance, succession guarantees. When a governor cannot or cannot pay every bill that’s brought to power, the same coalition that has brought him to power starts to oppose him, quietly at first and then louder. That is precisely the story of Seyi Makinde’s second term.
Senator Olufemi Lanlehin was one of those who crossed party lines and stood up and rallied to Makinde in 2019. The idea was that influence exerted in favour of a candidate would be transferred to influence shared when the candidate is chosen. When Makinde’s power was consolidated and some of these early allies felt sidelined, the bitterness was inevitable. Alhaja Mulikat Akande-Adeola, a former leader of the house of representatives and a political figure of her own, goes down a similar trajectory from enthusiastic ally to alienated figure a story that has been played out in Makinde’s tenure. Senator Hosea Agboola and Chief Bisi Ilaka are also illustrative of the slowly diminishing goodwill that at first seemed to cement Makinde’s political base. These were not peripheral figures. They were foundational ones. Their distance from the Governor speaks to a deeper truth – that Makinde in governing chose consolidation over inclusion and is now paying the compounding price of that choice.
Tinubu, Atiku and the 2023 Gamble That May Not Pay Off.
The 2023 general election showed the deepest contradiction of Seyi Makinde’s political character—and it will still haunt him. On paper, Makinde was a PDP governor bound by party loyalty to campaign hard for Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the party’s presidential flag bearer. In practice, Makinde was one of the most prominent members of the PDP Governors’ Forum G5 the influential group of five PDP governors who, under the informal command of Nyesom Wike, foiled Atiku’s presidency from within the party. The G5’s complaint was not only personal, though there were certainly personal grievances. It was rooted in a deeper conviction about power rotation and regional equity. The argument, passionately expressed and said openly, was that the presidency in 2023 ought to return to the South after the Buhari years in the North. Atiku Abubakar, a Northerner who wanted a return ticket to Aso Rock, was a fundamental breach of the unwritten but widely accepted zoning principle in the G5’s view. The feeling was straightforward in the G5 camp: it was not Atiku’s turn, and no amount of party discipline should oblige Southern governors to give up a generation of opportunity for the lesser bidder to be left to the wrong candidate at the wrong time. The G5 now had no choice but to turn to Bola Tinubu, Lagos strongman and APC presidential candidate and quintessentially Southern in every political calculation. What followed is one of the worst-kept secrets in Nigerian politics. Makinde and his G5 colleagues didn’t necessarily go all in and formally switch sides to Tinubu; but their cold-shouldering of Atiku’s campaign did work just as well. They didn’t give them the machinery, the mobilisation, the energy and the grassroots structures that a PDP presidential campaign in the Southwest needed. The result was clear: Tinubu won in a region of PDP governors who’s in power. The political game appeared clear in the moment. The G5 governors, Makinde included, perceived a Tinubu presidency to be a friendly federal centre one that wouldn’t use federal agencies against opposition governors, one that would be a place for equitable allocation of resources, one that would remember who had stood aside when it was most important. It was transactional politics at its worst, and for a short time after Tinubu’s victory it seemed to be working. Makinde seemed to have a little comfort that most opposition governors didn’t have a working, if carefully managed, relationship with Abuja.
But Nigerian political transactions rarely last long. Makinde and Tinubu’s relationship now seems to be cooling down. The federal goodwill that the Governor quietly acquired through his 2023 calculations has not translated into the sustained political cover he expected. Federal appointments, political patronage, and the quiet support that opposition governors sometimes receive from a friendly presidency in exchange for past favours have not yet materialised in the way Makinde’s camp had hoped. The trade was made. The dividends remain elusive. What is most damaging for Makinde’s post-tenure prospects is the double jeopardy it creates. By working against Atiku in 2023, he permanently alienated a significant constituency in the PDP those who believed that party loyalty is not negotiable and that the G5 governors were nothing but traitors in opposition clothing. These voices have not forgiven and they have not forgotten. Any future national ambition Makinde wants to carry on from the PDP will have to wrestle with this deep and unresolved grievance. Meanwhile the Tinubu relationship the alliance that he sacrificed his PDP standing to forge has not provided the protection or political currency that he needed. He finds himself in the uncomfortable position of a man who burned one bridge in hope of another that would be supported in the long run, only to discover that the second bridge is no longer as strong as it appeared from a distance. The Wike Complication
Nyesom Wike’s open revolt in the PDP created a crisis that every PDP governor had to navigate carefully. Wike, upset by the party’s treatment of him once he lost the presidential ticket, was disruptive in his own right: he was joining the federal government, but he was still technically in the PDP, and he used his considerable resources to punish those he perceived as foes. Makinde’s handling of the Wike crisis left no one satisfied. Those in the mainstream of the PDP felt he didn’t stand firmly with the party. Makinde, trying to find a middle ground, was in fact able to irritate both camps a political error that put him in an even more vulnerable position, and more isolated position than he might have anticipated when he opted for ambiguity over clarity in his first step.
Fayose: The External Sword
On this already-broken political landscape comes Ayodele Fayose, the previous Ekiti State Governor, and a man with no political silence. Fayose has said in a recent interview, in a blunt manner, that he is determined to ensure Seyi Makinde is driven out of the political community and sidelined from politics entirely. These are not idle words from a man who can do so without followers, he says. Fayose has a passionate and vocal base in the southwestern part of PDP and his attacks on Makinde, which stem from arrogance, deliberate marginalisation and the fight for power in the party’s regional hierarchy, are deep, personal and aggressive and loud. Fayose’s offensive matters not because he alone cannot determine the political direction of Makinde, but because he is a growing and increasingly powerful voice of the growing and more and more powerful chorus. When external figures feel confident enough to openly declare campaigns of ostracism against a sitting governor, it is clear that the political insulation that once made Makinde untouchable has decisively collapsed.
The Oriyomi Crisis: When Brotherhood Becomes Battleground.
Perhaps no incident is more indicative of Makinde’s present isolation than his very public rift with Alhaji Oriyomi Hamzat, media entrepreneur, broadcaster and one of the men whose grassroots influence and communications savvy helped drive Makinde brand growth before 2019. Oriyomi was not just a fan. He was a brother-in-arms, the kind of ally that, at one point, seemed like a constitutional guarantee. That loyalty has now devolved into open rivalry. Oriyomi Hamzat has declared his desire to become the next Governor of Oyo State, which is very legitimate and should be accepted in a democracy. But it has collided directly and catastrophically with Makinde’s succession agenda. The Governor has placed his full support behind Bimbo Adekanmbi as his preferred and anointed candidate. An Oriyomi governorship bid is not competition in Makinde’s view; it is existential disruption. It tears apart the PDP’s base, undermines the succession narrative, and sends a clear signal to anybody else in the political space who might want to run against the Governor that the Governor’s authority in Oyo is no longer absolute. What makes this conflict so damaging is not just its political impact; it is also deeply personal. When a man who did so much work in developing your public profile, amplifying your voice and galvanizing your early supporters decides he wants the seat you are vacating, it hits you hard, and it’s uncomfortable. Was the alliance always a transactional one? Did Makinde’s unwillingness to accommodate his friend’s legitimate aims turn a friend into a hard competition? And as in Nigerian politics, the answer is a complex and uncomfortable mix.
What Does Seyi Makinde Do Now?
The question of what happens to Seyi Makinde now is hanging like a harmattan haze in the Ibadan air, heavy, and unresolved. He is constitutionally barred from a third term. His national aspirations, if there are even such, would require a new coalition and the very thing he watches dissolve in real time. In the short term, Adekanmbi’s legacy will depend on whether Adekanmbi wins or loses and on the extent to which the political structure of Oyo State survives long enough for him to hand the power to Oyo State to its new people even if he is removed. The succession battle will be brutal.
Oriyomi’s candidacy will divide the PDP vote and potentially give the governorship to a candidate that is outside Makinde’s scope, the ultimate indignity for a governor who spent so much of his time and energy managing his own political narrative. In order to win Adekanmbi, Makinde will have to follow in his wake what he never did before and rebuild the bridges he burned, give real olive branches to those he was too far away from, and assemble a coalition that is strong enough to give him one last electoral victory before he dies. And whether that reconciliation is still possible – whether the estranged figures of his political life are ready to return from the cold – is the question that remains unanswered at the end of his governorship. Former governors in Nigeria who leave without a functioning successor, without a national party voice, and with a trail of estranged allies rarely feel comfortable in the elder statesman’s position they imagine for themselves in quiet moments. Some make it back through patience, re-formation, and the humility that power rarely teaches. Some disappear into irrelevance, sometimes to endorse candidates in exchange for a seat at someone else’s table. Makinde is intelligent, resourceful and not without real achievements in infrastructure, education and healthcare delivery that will outlast the political noise surrounding his exit. But legacy and relevance are different currencies, and they don’t always move together. His legacy in Oyo State might well be secured. His relevance in Nigerian politics after May 2027 is the question which no one (including, probably, the Governor himself) can answer with any confidence now.
The summit, as the proverb warns, is a lonely place. Seyi Makinde is learning that lesson in the most public and unforgiving way possible. Now the bigger question is not whether he will fall from it he has to, as all governors do eventually but if he will drop down, on his own terms or be propelled by the very hands which once lifted him there.
Olatunji Awe, who used to live in Ibadan, writes from Derby County, United Kingdom.
