Seyi Makinde and the Making of a Fourth Force

For most of the Fourth Republic, Nigerian presidential elections have been contests of two. A ruling party met a single principal rival, and the rest of the ballot paper was sort of a decoration. Peter Obi disturbed that arithmetic in 2023, when he carried a third force from the margins to an unexpected result. With the poll now fixed for 16 January 2027, the sums are being disturbed again. INEC has cleared eighteen presidential tickets, but the serious conversation turns on four names: President Bola Tinubu of the APC, Atiku Abubakar of the ADC, Peter Obi of the Nigeria Democratic Congress, and the least expected of them, the Governor of Oyo State, Seyi Makinde, who carries the flag of the Allied Peoples Movement.

Oluseyi Abiodun Makinde was born in Ibadan on Christmas Day, 1967, and his early life belongs to the world of engineering rather than politics. He studied electrical engineering at the University of Lagos, graduating in 1990, and entered the oil and gas industry, working with Shell before striking out on his own. In 1997 he founded Makon Engineering and Technical Services, which grew into the Makon Group. He therefore arrived in public life as a man of the oil field and the balance sheet, a background that has shaped his manner: measured, numerate, impatient with theatrics. It also explains why he is so often described as a technocrat in a country whose politics has seldom rewarded that kind of person.

In 2007 he contested the Oyo South senatorial seat on the ANPP platform and lost, falling to the PDP’s Kamoru Adedibu, scion of the family whose name was synonymous with Ibadan’s old political machinery. He later sought the PDP senatorial ticket in 2011 and failed at the primaries. In 2014 he pursued the PDP governorship ticket, was unsuccessful, moved to the Social Democratic Party and finished third with 54,740 votes. Few men with his wealth and professional standing would have persisted through so many rebuffs. He returned to the PDP, secured its ticket in 2018 and, on his fourth major electoral attempt, won Oyo in March 2019. He was re-elected in 2023.

What did he do with the office? His administration branded its programme Omi tun tun, a Yoruba term for ‘new dawn’, and the emphasis fell on development;  roads, schools, health, security and a business-friendly climate. The road programme is the most visible chapter. His government completed a wholly new 76.7 kilometre road linking Ogbomoso, Fapote and Iseyin, and began work on a 110 kilometre circular road around Ibadan, designed to open the Ogbomoso and Oke-Ogun zones to commerce. The Ibadan Airport has been upgraded in the hope of making it a credible alternative to Lagos, and supporters credit the administration with relatively stable fiscal management that allowed ambitious projects without the arrears and distress that haunt many state treasuries. Workers have generally been paid, a modest virtue in Nigerian governance that is more rarely achieved than it ought to be.

In education, he abolished fees in public primary and secondary schools, recruited thousands of teachers and renovated classrooms. His administration also claims that enrolment in public schools has tripled and that close to 100,000 out-of-school children have returned to classrooms, and it points to the elevation of Emmanuel Alayande College of Education to university status. He also settled the long, unhappy dispute over the ownership of LAUTECH in Ogbomoso, which his allies cite as proof that he keeps his promises. Add the Amotekun security corps, the Light Up Oyo street lighting scheme and a push into agribusiness, and one can see the outline of a governor who has tried to govern broadly rather than spectacularly.

His route to the APM is a story of party politics in disrepair. Makinde was one of the governors who fell out with the PDP leadership over the 2023 ticket and the sharing of power, and he stayed within the party while declining to follow the path of those who crossed to the APC. He has said that President Tinubu once asked him to name Adebayo Adelabu as his ministerial choice and that he refused. The PDP, meanwhile, has fractured so badly that rival factions now field their own candidates. His emergence at the APM primary in Ibadan on 30 May was presented as a new alliance of PDP elements and the APM, with Nigerians seeking an alternative direction. The party’s convention in Bauchi on 13 August formally presented him as its candidate, with Bauchi Governor Bala Mohammed as national leader. Makinde thus runs in a party that isn’t his, but still has the merit of being its presidential candidate.

His running mate tells its own story. He has chosen Musa Lawal Daura, the former Director-General of the DSS, who is described as the ticket’s security-heavy northern component. A Yoruba technocrat from the South-West needs northern credibility and a hard-edged answer to the insecurity that dominates the national mood. The risks are equally plain. Daura’s tenure ended after the 2018 blockade of the National Assembly, an episode that sits awkwardly beside a campaign promising openness and respect for institutions.

At a town hall in Yola, Makinde promised a four-year transitional Government of National Unity if elected, and vowed to serve only one term. He pledged to be truthful about the country’s difficulties, declaring that 2027 should mark the end of the politics of deceit and lies, and he challenged the Federal Government to publish its petroleum pricing template. He has also promised reform of the oil and gas sector, a serious assault on hunger, and a measure of devolution to the states. A single term and a government of national unity are shrewd answers to northern anxieties about power concentrating in one region, and they set him apart from rivals who speak chiefly of their own readiness. They are also easy to promise and hard to deliver, since a unity government must be negotiated with the very politicians it hopes to transcend.

The electoral arithmetic is stern. Nigeria’s constitution asks of a winner not merely the most votes but at least a quarter of the votes in two thirds of the states, so a candidate must travel well beyond his home region. Tinubu commands the incumbent’s machinery and has a claim on the South-West that Makinde cannot ignore, since both men ask for the same Yoruba heartland. Atiku, paired with Rotimi Amaechi, brings a veteran’s network in the North, while Obi, paired with Rabiu Kwankwaso, offers a youthful, urban and highly motivated following. Makinde enters with a lower national profile, a smaller party apparatus and the unenviable task of persuading voters that he is a first choice rather than a protest vote against the other three.

Yet that is precisely what makes him interesting. He is not a retread of a long political career, nor a movement leader born of a hashtag. He is a governor with a delivery record, a mild public manner and a reputation for avoiding scandal, a combination which, in a fatigued electorate, may carry more appeal than the more theatrical offerings. With the voter register reportedly at 103 million, he has been urging citizens to collect their permanent voters’ cards.

Whether he can convert quiet competence into a national coalition is the open question of this cycle. A fragmented opposition may well favour the incumbent, and Makinde’s candidacy will be accused of splitting votes before a single ballot is cast. But elections in Nigeria have a habit of defying the confident forecast.