A 21-member stakeholder panel of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has overwhelmingly rejected Governor Seyi Makinde’s preferred successor, Abimbola Adekanmbi, in favor of Dr Debo Akande, the Director General of the Oyo State Agribusiness Development Agency.
The panel, drawn from the state’s three geopolitical zones, convened in Ibadan and on Sunday, May 10, voted 20-1 in support of Dr Debo Akande, after a two-day deliberative process. According to party sources, Abimbola Adekanmbi, the governor’s anointed successor, received only a single vote.
The selection process commenced with a five-member inner caucus that deliberated for 15 hours. In the initial vote, Adekanmbi recorded zero votes while Akande secured three. However, following a recess and further consultations, the expanded stakeholder meeting produced a decisive 20-1 verdict in favour of Akande.
Despite the outcome, sources within the party alleged that a directive was issued to set aside the result and maintain Adekanmbi as the governor’s preferred candidate. The alleged move is said to have been influenced by Otunba Seye Famojuro, a close associate of Governor Seyi Makinde.
Stakeholders opposed to Adekanmbi cited three main concerns: his tenure as Commissioner for Finance under former Governor Abiola Ajimobi, during which civil servants experienced protracted salary arrears; his defection to the PDP on 10th December, 2025, after contesting the 2023 Oyo South senatorial ticket on the APC platform; and his Christian faith, which they argue conflicts with an unwritten zoning arrangement favoring a Muslim candidate come 2027.
Meanwhile, an online claim suggesting Adekanmbi defeated Saheed Fijabi in a stakeholder vote was dismissed by insiders as “entirely false and misleading.”
The development has not only added to the deep calculations and pattern of friction between mankind and PDP structures in the build-up to 2027, but has also exposed the complex web of loyalty, regional identity, religion, and the quest for political survival currently defining the politics of succession and survival in Oyo State.
Suffice it to state that in the build-up to the 2023 general election, Makinde was a member of the G5 group of PDP governors who openly opposed the party’s presidential candidate, Atiku Abubakar, over the failure to zone the ticket to the South. The PDP lost all five G5 states in the presidential election, including Oyo, to APC’s Bola Tinubu, while Makinde retained the governorship.
The G5 alliance has since dissolved after the 2023 general election. Nyesom Wike, another member of the group, who currently serves as Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) under President Bola Tinubu, last December, during a media chat in Port Harcourt, accused Makinde of driving the PDP’s internal crisis to advance a presidential ambition, alleging litigation and other procedural maneuvers. Makinde responded that Wike had pledged to “hold PDP” for President Tinubu ahead of the 2027 election, a claim Wike has denied.
The conflict split the party into two factions. Makinde’s faction held a national convention in Ibadan on 15-16 November 2025 despite a Federal High Court restraining order. The Court of Appeal upheld the restraint, and on 1 May 2026, the Supreme Court invalidated the convention in a split decision. At an Oyo PDP stakeholders meeting, which took place on March 23 this year, Makinde had declared that the vacated convention “remains the platform” for selecting 2027 candidates.
The trajectory of sabotaging his party’s 2023 presidential ticket while securing his own re-election, impeding the post-2023 PDP in pursuit of a presidential ambition, and the rejection of his protege by his expanded stakeholder panel raises questions about the extent of Makinde’s influence within the party ahead of 2027. Party members now await whether the stakeholder’s choice of Akande will stand or be vetoed by the governor.
