The Governor of Oyo State, Seyi Makinde’s decision to name Hon. Abimbola Adekanmbi as his preferred candidate for the 2027 governorship election has triggered strong backlash from Oyo People’s Democratic Party (PDP) stakeholders, who overwhelmingly rejected him in favour of Dr Debo Akande.

The carefully constituted 21-member stakeholder panel, drawn from across the state’s geopolitical zones voted 20-1 in support of Akande, Director General of the Oyo State Agribusiness Development Agency.

Adekanmbi, the Governor’s anointed choice, received only one vote. The process began with a five-member inner caucus that sat for 15 hours.

In initial voting, Adekanmbi scored zero votes while Akande led with three. After a recess and further deliberations the following day, the expanded stakeholder meeting delivered a decisive 20-1 verdict for Akande.

Sources within the party allege that despite this clear position, a directive was issued to set aside the result and declare Adekanmbi as the governor’s preferred candidate.

The move is said to have been heavily influenced by Otunba Seye Famojuro, a close ally of the governor. Stakeholders opposed to Adekanmbi raised three main concerns: his record as Commissioner for Finance under former Governor Abiola Ajimobi, during which civil servants suffered prolonged salary arrears; his recent defection to the PDP on December 10, 2025, after contesting the 2023 Oyo South senatorial ticket on the APC platform; and his Christian faith, which conflicts with an unwritten zoning agreement that the next governor should be Muslim.

A separate online claim suggesting Adekanmbi defeated Saheed Fijabi in a stakeholder vote was dismissed by insiders as “entirely false and misleading.”

The Adekanmbi imposition follows a documented record of Governor Makinde acting against agreements, party structures, and now his own stakeholder caucus.

In the run-up to the 2023 general election, Makinde was a member of the G5 group of PDP governors, alongside Nyesom Wike (Rivers), Samuel Ortom (Benue), Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi (Enugu), and Okezie Ikpeazu (Abia), who openly worked against the presidential candidacy of Atiku Abubakar over the party’s failure to honour zoning to the South.

The PDP lost all five of the G5 governors’ states at the presidential poll. In Oyo, the APC’s Bola Tinubu won the presidential vote while Makinde retained the governorship on the PDP platform.

The G5 alliance has since collapsed. Wike accepted appointment as Minister of the Federal Capital Territory under President Tinubu. In a December 2025 media chat in Port Harcourt, Wike said the current crisis in the PDP was driven by Makinde’s presidential ambition, accusing him of orchestrating the absence of the National Secretary, Senator Samuel Anyanwu, and pursuing litigation at the Enugu State High Court, which Wike said lacked jurisdiction over party matters.

Makinde countered that during a meeting at the Presidential Villa attended by President Tinubu, Wike had pledged to “hold PDP” for the President ahead of the 2027 election.

Wike has denied the claim. The fallout fractured the party into two factions. Makinde’s faction held a national convention in Ibadan on November 15 and 16, 2025, in defiance of a Federal High Court restraining order.

The Court of Appeal subsequently upheld the restraint. On May 1, 2026, the Supreme Court, in a split decision, invalidated the convention. At an Oyo PDP stakeholders meeting on March 23, 2026, before the apex court ruling, Makinde had already declared that the vacated convention “Remains the platform” through which the PDP would field its candidates for 2027.

The pattern of conduct, from sabotaging his party’s 2023 presidential ticket while securing his own re-election, to fracturing the post-2023 PDP in pursuit of a presidential vehicle, to convening a national convention in defiance of multiple court orders, now extends to the imposition of a candidate his own caucus and expanded stakeholder panel rejected by twenty votes to one.

The question for the Oyo PDP is no longer who the stakeholders chose. It is whether that choice will hold against the governor’s veto.