One year ago, Governor Seyi Makinde promised to unveil the man who will fly the flag of his party in the 2027 governorship election. “The man that will succeed me will be below 52 years of age and will be publicly announced by January, 2026”, the Governor said with practiced confidence at his annual Omituntun Ramadan Lecture held at the Government House Arcade, Agodi, Ibadan.
Makinde’s chilling and thrilling words pierced through the aspirations of many contenders with unmistakable force. For instance, the likes of gubernatorial hopeful, Chief Jibril Dotun Sanusi, frowned at that high benchmark, with many of his paid writers throwing jibes at the governor for deliberately targeting one of Ibadan’s biggest spenders. As a matter of fact, many within the party hierarchy equally felt the repeated and insistent nature of the governor’s statement tends to alienate and isolate other serious contenders from throwing their hats into the ring for the party’s ticket – and of course, throwing their cash in the event that they lost out in the power play.
Many argued that GSM’s unnecessary guardrails quietly ignited an internal firestorm within the party; plus, it also forced others to reexamine their relationship with the governor while taking decisive actions in the process. For instance, Chief Jibril Dotun Sanusi, 57, our example from the earlier, swiftly recalibrated his governorship dreams by announcing his withdrawal from the race altogether asserting that “his decision was significantly influenced by discussions with my father, Alhaji Ganiyu Oladosu Sanusi”. For political observers in the state, Sanusi’s sudden and abrupt withdrawal had Makinde’s hand written all over it.
Today, the cold war brewing between the Governor and the oil magnate can only be understood as the 2027 elections gather momentum! That day, at the Government House Arcade, Mr. Makinde spoke with the assurance of a man who has all the cards to his chest: command and control of the party structure and leadership, the readiness to use cash to install one of his lackeys, and finally the persuasive swagger that has helped him clinch victory in the last two elections by an undisputable margin.
More than twelve months since that boastful promise was made, the jokes seem to be on the Governor to keep to his words. As it turned out, the things the Governor thought were under his firm grip appeared to have pitifully and gradually slipped away with mirthful abandon. Costly political miscalculation appears to have upended the Governor’s game plan. No wonder the governor has been left in a lurch, romancing his once political adversary while running to stanch the bleed from his self-inflicted political gamble and quagmire. First off, to better understand how the governor found himself between the rock and the hard place, it is important to take some steps back.
One quick stop is to understand the politics of Mr. Makinde. Unlike Chief Obafemi Awolowo and President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, two eminent Nigerians whose politics were guided by nurturing parties, Mr. Makinde is not a builder of a political platform. He, to put it modestly, is an opportunist of sorts. To put it more appropriately: any politician who prefers taking shelter under another man’s roof risks getting pushed out of the house in the middle of the night over a flimsy arguement. But a politician with his own abode rarely gets pushed to the mouth of a shark. Wart and all, a builder, under any circumstances, will continue to be a builder. In part because it is ingrained in their DNA.
In 2025, when Mr. Makinde promised the people of Oyo State to field a young and credentialed candidate as his likely successor, he was speaking from a place of borrowed platform. Today, the barrage of contradictory and controversial court verdicts regarding the disputed leadership structure of the People’s Democratic Party is enough to dampen the resolve of any serious politician. Not surprisingly, the party has been abandoned by notable and eminent figures within its ranks and files. By locking horns with the likes of Nyesom Wike, a founding member of the PDP and once its biggest financial backer, Mr. Makinde effectively shut the door to his political survival under the umbrella party.
From the comfort of his office in Agodi, Ibadan, Mr. Makinde thought he could bend the wheel of the party to serve his whims and caprices. Interestingly, he assumed, albeit wrongly, that the might of his office could make right within the party. Nobody whispered to him that in PDP, the might of the governor’s office does not make a right – unless such a governor is in Wike’s camp. Additionally, he did what other rookie politicians would do when faced by an outsize and formidable opponent: roll out the drum of war, fight like hell, and burn all bridges. Even when it was suicidal to forcefully hijack the party’s structure from a strategic and combative politician like Wike, Mr. Makinde still went ahead with his early ‘Christmas Carol’ aka PDP National Convention, where the likes of Ademola Adeleke, Osun State Governor, conspicuously missed with stunned silence. That the governors of Adamawa and Zamfara have all deserted the party for Mr. Makinde and his counterpart in Bauchi, Bala Muhammed, is an indication of the bottomless pit the governor has sunk the party into. Mr. Makinde desperately wanted to be the PDP National leader without building a national clout. That quickly backfired. The result is a party that is confused in the state and collapsing at the national level. Had GSM foresaw the perils and pitfalls of fighting Mr. Wike at the village square to his political survival, he could have rethought his game plan and exercised stoic restraint in dealing with the man many have dubbed the ‘Wicked Wike’.
Of note, the inability to build a political platform plus the perennial dogfights with Mr. Wike appear not to be the only credible reasons Mr. Makinde’s political fortune has dwindled. There is the third factor: Tinubu’s re-election bid. As a veteran politician and a builder of the party, the re-election strategy of President Tinubu has contributed to the catastrophic collapse of the People’s Democratic Party. In his last democracy speech, President Tinubu enthused, “We cannot blame anybody seeking to bail out of a sinking ship even without a life jacket”. The President now has more governor under his party than any other President in the history of Nigeria.
As things stand, it does not matter what step Governor Makinde takes to redeem his battered political stock. Whether he team up with ‘vagabond’ Wike or find a way to mend broken fences with Abuja, the people, I mean the electorates, are alarmingly aware of the precarious situation the governor has put himself: he’s caught between the rock and the hard place at a time clarity, confidence and cold calculation ought to guide and guard the Governor’s succession plan.
Wale Oladigbolu writes about power, politics, policy, governance and everything in between exclusively about Oyo State.
