ON May 29, 2023 Governor Seyi Makinde was inaugurated for a second consecutive term mandate as governor of the ‘pace setter’ Oyo State.
I reminisce on the 1956 election in Western Region. I was in my teens then, but thanks to God Almighty for His grace, I am now an Octogenarian. I also recall the 2019 gubernatorial election in Oyo State and how Governor Seyi Makinde won, I can say, “Like our sage Papa Obafemi Awolowo like Governor Seyi Makinde.”
The 1956 election was the first election conducted on the basis of popular universal adult suffrage, that is, the right of all adults to vote.
The governance of welfarism or call it pragmatic socialism which the sage Chief Obafemi Awolowo enacted within a short period was and is still a benchmark for all those aspiring to govern the six states that make up the present Southwest geo-political zone to follow and improve upon.
In the 1956 election, despite the shenanigans and political brigandage and emotional primordial ethnic sentiments displayed by some electorate, Chief Obafemi Awolowo won the election against Chief Adegoke Adelabu (Penkelemesi) fair and square.
It is therefore a thing of joy that in both 2019 and 2023 elections, the electorate in Oyo State, reminiscent of 1956 electorate, voted overwhelmingly for Governor Makinde to govern for eight years running.
To me, I say without any equivocation that the appreciative electorate in Oyo State saw in Governor Seyi Makinde a model per excellence in our Pa Awolowo to be copied in governing Oyo State. Hence I say with what I have seen in Governor Makinde’s governance during the past four years – “Like our sage Pa Obafemi Awolowo like Engr Seyi Makinde.”
Believe it or not Yorubas have been yearning, since the demise of Chief Obafemi Awolowo, to have somebody like him to govern us in truth, and there came Seyi Makinde. Will he carry on as he did in his first term, following the paths of Pa Awolowo’s developmental infrastructural and social economic programmes that would finally usher in El Dorado in Oyo State? I believe he can do it. All he needs is to constantly set before himself Chief Obafemi Awolowo as his model.
Pa Obafemi Awolowo himself set before him the Lord Jesus Christ as his model; and that is why he succeeded.
May Almighty God help Governor Seyi Makinde in this onerous task of governing Oyo State in the years ahead.
- Peter Olaosebikan, Ibadan
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