Governor Seyi Makinde South Africans versus Africans for African universities Nigeria’s human capital Nigeria’s insecurity Nigeria’s war against Iran’s war trials of Nasir El Rufai
On a number of social media platforms last week, I came across posts and comments about Governor Seyi Makinde. Now, that itself is not unusual. He is, after all, the governor of Oyo State, one of Nigeria’s largest states and home to Ibadan. He is also a visible political figure on the national scene.
But the comments I ran into were particularly strident and relentless. Given the number of people posting similar content within seconds of one another, it appeared coordinated. What struck me, and what has inspired this early intervention, was the almost total absence of nuance, certainly no pretension to objectivity, and what appeared, at times, to be a revel in wild speculation.
The electoral season is in earnest, and I was going to write about Seyi Makinde at some point, not least because he is the governor of my state. If one were to believe the tone and stridency of some of the commentators I referenced earlier, one would assume that Makinde was the worst governor Oyo State ever had. That is not serious public reasoning. It is shallow partisan propaganda dressed up as commentary.
Of course, one must understand the practical politics of opposition in any high-stakes electoral contest. It is legitimate to find and exploit every honest line of criticism against your opponent. My concern is with partisans whose approach appears to be to dull, rather than raise, the consciousness of citizens in their pursuit of power.
Neither Governor Seyi Makinde’s party, nor any successor he may prefer, has a God-given right to the next four-year mandate. I believe he is vulnerable. So is his party. So is the candidate he supports. But citizens must be vigilant and keep their eyes wide open, alert to power seekers who will lie, distort and obfuscate in their pursuit of power. Citizens must pay attention, not because of blind loyalty to Makinde, but solely in their own enlightened self-interest. So, please hear me out.
Seyi Makinde is one of the most consequential governors in the history of Oyo State. That statement does not require us to turn him into a saint or deny his failures. It simply requires us to look honestly at the political economy of his government.
He emerged as a relative political unknown from the world of oil and gas, where he had successfully run his own company for many years. By his own account, his political journey began when friends invited him into a group supporting former governor, now Olubadan, Rashidi Ladoja. He apparently had a kind of eureka moment, a realisation that he could hold political office and do well in it.
No sooner did he take office than he began to systematically break the political elite stranglehold on power and state resources. He was not quite the greenhorn revolutionary, mind. He remained the clear-eyed politician with the practical understanding of Realpolitik. But he also appeared determined, with singularity of mind, to disrupt the worst excesses of elite capture in the state and free up resources for development.
Then Makinde did the unthinkable. He set in motion a regime of salary payments that meant, across his two terms to date, every civil servant received salary every month, without fail. Not done, he also added a 13th-month pay in December.
Now, the quick retort is that this is the most ordinary thing a state should do for its public workers. I entirely agree. But does it not then speak to the depth of rot into which the state had sunk that this “ordinary” act became an extraordinary, almost never-before-seen miracle in a state with a heavy public-sector workforce?
Well, the essence of genius is not always in rocket-science inventions. Sometimes, it lies in using simple means and methods to achieve extraordinary outcomes. Makinde’s stroke of genius was not merely in the “simple” act of freeing up resources from inordinately greedy elites. It was in using those freed-up resources to transform a large collective of previously wasted and disoriented “tigers” into a vast army of foot soldiers for his cause.
To use a biblical metaphor, he turned a valley of dry bones into an “exceedingly great army”, standing on their feet, ready to battle for their bringer of hope. These civil servants, already natural opinion leaders across their communities, now financially and emotionally empowered, will not easily abandon the man who restored their dignity.
Makinde has therefore done an important job, not just for Oyo State, but for the Nigerian democratic experience itself. He disrupted the ominous slide into an oligarchy of ostensibly wanton elites by bringing about a new distribution and diffusion of political power and citizen agency. By this singular stroke, he raised the consciousness of ordinary citizens about what is possible if elites at the top of the pyramid would moderate their greed a little for the greater good. This consciousness raising may well be his most defining impact.
Civil servants’ pay is only one example. We have seen evidence of massive infrastructural development across the state, even if a significant proportion is skewed towards Ibadan. I recall that the late Alaafin, surprised by the speed with which Makinde completed the reconstruction and upgrade of Akesan Market in Oyo, wondered aloud how he managed to find the money to execute the project in such record time.
Of course, to perform feats that had not been achieved at this scale before, you need a character like Makinde: singular in determination, unwavering in conviction, with courage and a touch of stubbornness to boot. That is part of the essence of Makinde’s genius. It is also his flaw, as we shall now see.
Governor Makinde is the single-minded radical who disrupted the elite hold on power only to present, in some respects, as a reactionary unwilling to delegate real power and funds to local governments, the tier of government closest to the grassroots and the critical frontline where ordinary people feel government most directly.
This is not a small weakness. Local government is where public life either breathes or suffocates. It is where primary schools decay or improve, markets function or fail, waste is cleared or abandoned, local roads become usable or remain punishment, and insecurity first announces itself. A governor may build highways and pay salaries, but if local governments remain politically managed from above, grassroots democracy remains stunted.
Makinde is also the courageous, farsighted leader who successfully challenged powerful godfathers to a duel and won decisively, but who also enabled political actors who behaved like feudal lords. I do not suggest this is a widespread feature of his administration. But I am aware of at least one notable case where a local political actor, enabled by the governor and driven more by personal loyalty than public purpose, installed questionable figures and dared anyone who disagreed to stand in the way. That is not democratic renewal. It is merely the replacement of one form of domination with another.
Hubris is always lurking at the door of great achievers. It is the task of great men to see it and tame it. Makinde is not exempt from the tempting shadows of hubris. I recall that, early in his first term, when he was told that a community group had written a petition about unpleasant developments in their area, he effectively derided the petitioners as unsavoury elements, apparently prompted by insiders in his team. A few years down the line, the governor would praise the same group for its excellent work in partnership with government. He clearly knew little about the group in that first instance, and his default mode, it appeared, was to deride the unknown as unsavoury.
That is one danger of power. It narrows the circle of truth. It fills the ears of leaders with the voices of gatekeepers. It can turn even a courageous reformer into a man too quick to dismiss citizens he has not taken time to understand.
Let me bring this to a close by returning to the point made earlier. Governor Makinde and his party are vulnerable. A successor of his preference is certainly not a given. Nor should it be. Oyo State is not an inheritance. It is not private property.
But citizens must not fall victim to a fellowship of aggrieved elites trying to stage a comeback to full control of the state treasury. Not every critic of Makinde is dishonest. Many criticisms are legitimate, and some are necessary. But citizens must learn to distinguish between honest criticism and the resentment of those who miss privileged access to public resources.
Citizens must ask hard questions of challengers and opposition parties. It all comes down to the simple question: what, specifically, would you do differently about the things you criticise Makinde for? If you say he has failed on local government autonomy, what is your own plan for real devolution? If you criticise his spending priorities, what will you fund, what will you cut, and how will you protect workers? If you blame Makinde for the desperate security situation in Oyo, including the unresolved kidnapping case that continues to torment families and communities, what exactly would you do differently to secure lives, rescue hostages, strengthen local intelligence and restore public confidence?
It is very easy to point out flaws even in geniuses. Indeed, it is in the nature of geniuses to be flawed. But the serious question is this: what would you do differently and better, and how?
That is the burden of citizenship in this electoral season. The people of Oyo State must neither canonise Makinde nor surrender themselves to those who would erase his record for political convenience. They must acknowledge what has been done, interrogate what has been left undone, and demand that anyone asking to replace it must offer more than anger, slogans and entitlement.
