“Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
For the past six years, Governor Seyi Makinde has ruled with an unbridled political grip; riding roughshod like an unquestionable emperor. Little wonder, Akin Akinwale, social media analyst once coined the term ‘AGODI EMPEROR’ to capture his descent into authoritarianism. For all his time in office, Makinde has notoriously stepped and stomped on many sacred and sanctified social-cultural and political institutions with reckless abandon.
Take the government considered to be closer to the people. Not only has the governor underdeveloped the grassroot, he has equally crippled their capacity for any meaningful engagement. Despite the financial windfall into the coffers of the local government across the federation in part because of President Tinubu’s complete subsidy removal and the unification of the exchange rate (two fiscally responsible but painful policies), Makinde has effectively starved most of the council areas of their legitimate allocations thereby sending them back to the stone age. Consider his controversial and contradictory take on the traditional institution.
The Governor’s propensity for trampling on the age-long culture and tradition of the people has placed him on the rare pedestal of a meddlesome interloper. Makinde’s heart-wrenching disregard for the peoples storied culture, custom and tradition, whether it is in his tactic approval of Olusegun Obasanjo’s shouting match against our Obas, to “stand up for the governor” at the official commissioning of the Iseyin-Oyo road or manipulating the public against the ‘Oyo Mesi’ for collecting brides he couldn’t prove after selecting a candidate that differ from his or forcing the present Olubadan, Oba Rashidi Ladoja to bend to his knee or else he forfeits his right to the throne of the Olubadan, the mind-blowing record of his disrespect and disservice to the people of Oyo State is still been tallied.
The anyhowness that has characterized Makinde’s administration relationship with the Obas and Chiefs in Oyo State is one for the history book. Not surprisingly, his disgusting, distasteful and disgraceful coronation of three Ibadan High Chiefs to the rank of Oba, notably Senator Sarafadeen Abiodun Alli (one of his benefactors in the 2019 election) in absentia yesterday, 3rd March, 2026 marked the height of his arrogance for the traditional institution. By consenting to that profligacy on that ridiculous show, he has once again displayed his insensitivity to the people’s plight and pettiness against his political adversaries in broad daylight. More than any governor since the creation of the Oyo State, Makinde has buried more prominent kings than any of his predecessors. In that same breath, he has also installed more first class Obas in record time as well. For that privilege, one would have thought Governor Makinde would reflect on the significance of those moments by doing what is right or worse still, do something that is closed to the ‘right’. Instead, he has clandestinely assented to the controversial council of Obas and Chiefs law, elevated Olubadan as the chair of the Obas council, caused more troubles than solved, and manipulated the system to have his way.
Never has the Oyo state witnessed such a large-scale assault and disrespect on its traditional institution until Makinde came, saw and ‘conquered’ the system. I, like most of his supporters and ordinary townsfolk are miffed and worried about of Makinde’s gradual distortion and destruction of the traditional institution. Compared to his predecessors, Makinde’s tactic, particularly his charade of wasting tax payers’ money on coronation frivolities, seems above and beyond what any of his predecessors could have imagined.
Interestingly, Makinde is not alone. He has a model in late Alao-Akala who once publicly regretted his fisticuff with the late Alaafin of Oyo in the buildup to the 2011 governorship election. However, in sheer scale of power intoxication, Makinde stands twice as all on this ladder of institutional infamy compare to his predecessors. Recall the catastrophic fallout between late Akala and late Alaafin Lamidi Adeyemi.
That was a messy political dogfight that shouldn’t have happened but did happen anyway because powerful people love to flex their muscle and fight with all their might.
To be clear, Makinde’s brazen act of constitutional overreach and tactic of politicising the traditional institution to settle political scores has taken a dangerous dimension. Whether it is in Oyo or Ogbomoso or Ibadan or anywhere in between, the story of a governor who considered himself an emperor has remained the same, consistent with his authoritarian bent and unquestionable lordship.
From the moment he arbitrarily rejected the selection of Prince Lukman Gbadegesin as the Alaafin-designate by the majority of the Oyo Mesi in 2023, to threatening aggrieved Ogbomoso Princes over the selection of Oba Ghandi, to the day he single-handedly targeted Oba Rasheed Ladoja in the amended Ibadan chieftaincy law, to disparaging and damaging remarks against the eminent members of the Oyo-Mesi, and finally to his attempted humiliation of Senator Sarafadeen Alli because of his gubernatorial aspiration, Governor Seyi Makinde seem to have gone full cycle in testing the limit of his power and rewriting the law that govern the delicate traditional institution in the state. He is, in the history of modern Oyo State, the most disrespectful, disgraceful and damaging Governor to the evolution of the traditional institution in the state.
By going after the stool of the Alaafin of Oyo, for instance, Makinde sent a cryptic, and powerful message to the rest of the state: I am coming for you all. By telling the rubber-stamp assembly to change the state chieftaincy law at his discretion, he has shown the capacity to undermine the integrity and independence of any arms of government regardless of whose ox is gored. Instead of handling the controversy surrounding the selection of a new Alaafin of Oyo with tact, wisdom and openness, he acted impulsively, illegally and arbitrarily. In Ogbomoso, he openly and publicly threatened aggrieved Princes with the state firepower, subtly telling them to forgo and forget exploring the judicial process to seek redress. In Oyo, he sent his deputy to crown village chiefs and two of Alaafin’s prominent chiefs simply to hit back at the Alaafin Owoade who has stopped playing his petty and dirty games.
To many of Makinde’s ardent supporters, he has ticked all the boxes of a ‘HERO’ but to millions on the other side of the aisle, particularly the custodians of our culture and tradition, he is considered in the words of F. Scott Fitzgerald “a monumental tragedy” for setting the institution up for further political manipulation, division and balkanization. History, to paraphrase the old adage, is typically told by the victors and survivors. In this case, the traditional institution will not only survive this present assaults but thrive long after Governor Seyi Makinde’s tenure is dumped into the quicksand of irrelevance.
Wale Oladigbolu writes about power, politics, policy, governance and everything in between exclusively about Oyo State.
