Fifty years is a deceptively short time in the life of a civilization, but it is an eternity in the political trajectory of a post-colonial state.
When the military regime of General Murtala Muhammed excised the distinct entity of Oyo State from the Western State on February 3, 1976, the new State inherited an historical geographical boundary, the intellectual soul of the Obafemi Awolowo era, the administrative prowess of the Simeon Adebo civil service, and the crushing weight of exceptional expectation. Think about it, Ibadan, Oyo, Ogbomoso, Saaki, Ibarapa, Okeho, Iseyin, Igboora, Eruwa, Kishi, Ijaye, Awe, Tede, Ipapo, Iwere-Ile, Igaangan, Fiditi and the numerous historically distinct towns and cities that make up the newly formed Oyo State.
To reflect on Oyo State at 50, one will have to speak with a profound paradox. We are a state blessed with Nigeria’s most sophisticated institutional memory, hosting the nation’s premier citadel of learning and a civil service that once exported bureaucrats to the rest of the Commonwealth. Yet, we have often been hamstrung by a cyclical struggle between modernization and retrograde political patronage. We are the Pacesetter, yet for a significant part of the last fifty years, we seemed content to merely mark time, watching younger, less endowed states overtake us in economic dynamism.
As we audit this semicentennial milestone, we must look beyond the celebratory platitudes of Golden Jubilees. We must perform a forensic audit of our statehood and do what responsible states do; fix up. The central thesis of this reflection is that while our institutional architecture has proven remarkably durable, our development trajectory has been repeatedly altered.. Sometimes violently, but by the idiosyncratic visions, and sometimes myopic failures, of the men who have stood at the helm of affairs.
This is my attempt at analysing the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of every administration that has shaped our current reality. It is an inquiry into why, after 50 years, we are still debating the basics of infrastructure and fiscal sustainability.
The Foundational Era
The story of Oyo State begins with General David Jemibewon who served between 1976 and 1978. History will remember him not just as a soldier, but as an Architect. When the state was created, the challenges included the surgical separation of assets and personnel from the dissolved Western State. Jemibewon’s strength lay in operationalizing the new state without breaking the engine. He ensured that the Agodi Secretariat remained a functioning powerhouse rather than a hollow shell. He constructed the overhead bridge that connects the Government House Road to the State Secretariat. He acquired the land that currently houses Adamasingba Stadium and relocated the traditional inhabitants. Gen. Jemibewon established a trajectory of stability and prioritized the continuity of the civil service. In retrospect, this is a decision that preserved the institutional memory that saved the state from collapse in later, more turbulent years.
Gen. David Jemibewon was succeeded by Col. Paul Tarfa. Col. Tarfa had a brief stint between 1978 and 1979. I would like to define him as the Transition Manager. His tenure was defined by the austere discipline of the “Operation Feed the Nation” era. Tarfa was the bridge between the military command structure and the coming civilian experiment. His primary success was ensuring the apparatus of Oyo state was robust enough to handle the re-entry of partisan politics.
The Ideological Zenith and The Conservative Rupture
Then came the Golden Era, defined by the Cicero of Esa-Oke, Chief Bola Ige (1979–1983). To the elders reading this, Ige was not just a governor; he was an epoch. He remains one of the absolute benchmarks for progressive governance in the state.
Ige understood that governance must be driven by philosophy. And by aggressively implementing the Unity Party of Nigeria’s (UPN)Four Cardinal Programmes, specifically free education and free health services, he embedded a social contract so deep that every successor is still judged against it today. He democratized access to the future, ensuring that the son of a peasant in Oke-Ogun had the same educational access as the son of a permanent secretary in Bodija. His era was the height of institutional strength. However, it also sowed the seeds of our fiscal struggles, as the cost of this welfare state began to mount against dwindling revenues.
The 1983 elections brought a rupture. Dr. Victor Omololu Olunloyo (Oct 1983 – Dec 1983) governed for only three months, but his emergence was structurally significant. The Mathematician represented the arrival of the formidable Ibadan conservative elite challenging the progressive hegemony. It signaled a friction between the radical progressives and the conservative establishment that would define Oyo State politics for the next forty years. His tenure was too short to effect policy, but long enough to disrupt the political equilibrium.
The Khaki Interregnum
The collapse of the Second Republic ushered in a long winter of military rule. This era can be categorized into three distinct phases: The Disciplinarians, The Builders, and The Occupiers.
Lt. Col. Oladayo Popoola (1984–1985) and Col. Adetunji Olurin (1985–1988) governed during the severe economic contraction of the Buhari/Idiagbon and early Babangida years. Their mandate was hinged on survival. Popoola focused on environmental sanitation and fiscal discipline, attempting to curb the excesses of the political class. Olurin managed scarcity. While institutional innovation stalled, they prevented the complete collapse of state machinery during a national depression.
Col. Sasaenia Oresanya deserves more credit than history often affords him. He was a Rural Integrationist. He recognized, perhaps earlier than most, the structural danger of an Ibadan-only development model. His focus on rural electrification and development attempted to bridge the gap between the capital and the hinterlands. He left a legacy of trying to knit the state together economically.
Col. Abdulkareem Adisa was the Action Governor. Adisa was crude, direct, and eschewed bureaucracy, but he was undeniably effective in physical terms. He built. He was visible. However, his tenure oversaw a massive structural shift: the excision of Osun State in 1991.
This event is critical to our history. Oyo State lost a significant chunk of its agrarian base and mid-tier towns but retained the massive, expensive civil service structure in Ibadan. We lost landmass but kept the overhead. This structural imbalance, a heavy payroll supported by a reduced economic base, is the root of the fiscal crises that plagued the state for the next two decades.
The Third Republic brought Chief Kolapo Ishola (1992–1993). His administration was a government of the masses, a brief return to grassroots populism focused on rural health and community colleges. But the annulment of June 12 cut short any long-term institutional planning.
After the interim administrations of Navy Capt. Adetoye Sode and Col. Chinyere Ike Nwosu, Oyo State entered its darkest hour under Col. Ahmed Usman (1996–1998).
We must speak the truth about this era. If Bola Ige represented the height of our intellectual dignity, Ahmed Usman represented the nadir of our liberty. He governed Oyo like a conquered territory. True to it, he is a soldier. The Prisoner of War mentality he instilled crushed the spirit of the civil service. Files were treated with fear and innovation was punished. The institutional damage was severe as Oyo’s bureaucracy became timid, and trust in government evaporated. It was left to Comm. Pol. Amen Edore Oyakhire (1998–1999) to act as the Healer, soothing a bruised populace and restoring a semblance of dignity to the Agodi Government House in preparation for the Fourth Republic.
The Fourth Republic Renaissance
The return to democracy in 1999 unleashed a battle of ideologies and styles that has shaped the modern Oyo State.
Alhaji Lam Adesina (1999–2003) The Great Lam was the Great Arbiter. He re-established the supremacy of the political party (AD) over the state apparatus. Coming from the Awoist school, he prioritized free education and health. However, his adherence to austerity sometimes clashed with the public’s desire for rapid modernization. He stabilized the polity, but the state’s infrastructure remained largely stagnant as he prioritized salaries and pensions over capital projects.
His Imperial Majesty, Oba Rashidi Ladoja (2003–2007) brought a businessman’s logic to governance. He was the first to seriously challenge the civil service state mentality with private sector thinking. His 30 students per class policy was a bold attempt to prioritize quality over quantity in education.
However, his tenure highlights our greatest structural weakness of Amala Politics. The friction between governance and godfatherism (personified by the late High Chief Lamidi Ariyibi Adedibu) led to his unconstitutional impeachment. This was a failure of institutions. The legislature, the judiciary, and the security apparatus were all weaponized against a sitting governor. It cost the state years of stability and scared off potential investors who saw the state as politically volatile.
Otunba Adebayo Alao-Akala (2007–2011) The elites in Bodija and the intellectuals in UI may have sneered at his style, but Akala understood something crucial, Oyo State is not just Ibadan. He was the King of the Hinterlands. His aggressive road networks in Ogbomoso and Oke-Ogun decentralized development for the first time in decades. He democratized the dividends of democracy through what critics called ATM politics but supporters called welfare. He proved that a Governor could bypass the Ibadan elite and still hold power. His was a lesson in political geography.
Abiola Adeyemi Ajimobi (2011–2019) Akanji broke the jinx. As the first governor to secure a second term, he altered the state’s visual and security architecture. Ajimobi introduced the Koseleri era. He understood that for Oyo to attract global capital, it had to look the part.
He established the concept of urban renewal, charged the Bureau of Internal Revenue to aggressively boost IGR (shifting the state away from total Abuja dependence), and enforced a security architecture that tamed the NURTW. His Constituted Authority persona and perceived intellectual arrogance eventually alienated the voting masses, but he left an indelible template. His style of speaking, utterances against the civil servants and pensioners while he was still owing salaries will go down as one of his undoings. He raised the bar of governance; no governor can ever again be content with merely paying salaries.
Seyi Makinde (2019–Present) Governor Makinde represents a fusion of populism and technocracy. His tenure marks a distinct shift from building structures to building an economy. By linking the zones (Oke-Ogun to Ibadan, Ogbomoso to Iseyin) through infrastructure, he is attempting to solve the revenue problem by turning the state into an agribusiness hub.
He has prioritized the welfare of the workforce (prompt salary payments) to grease the local economy, a reversal of the austerity of previous years. However, the verdict on his long-term legacy will depend on two things: the sustainability of the debt profile incurred to build this infrastructure, and whether the agribusiness vision will come to fruition and survive his departure.
The Assets We Hold
Despite the turbulence of these regimes, certain institutional strengths have endured, providing the ballast that keeps the state afloat.
- The Oyo State Civil Service is unique. It retains a lineage of the Western Region service. Unlike states created in the 90s that had to import capacity, Oyo exported it. Despite the trauma of the Usman years and the corruption of the godfathers, there remains a core competence in the bureaucracy. The technical knowledge of “how to run a government” is an asset.
- As the host of Nigeria’s premier university (UI), The Polytechnic Ibadan, and research institutes like IITA and NISER, the state possesses an inherent advantage. This concentration of intellect keeps the state culturally relevant and provides a steady stream of human capital that other states envy.
- The Olubadan System. We must not underestimate our traditional institutions. The unique, non-hereditary succession system of the Ibadan monarchy has provided a layer of socio-political stability in the capital.While other towns burn over dynastic disputes, the Olubadan system offers a predictable, peaceful transition of traditional power, acting as a shock absorber for political tension
The Gaps in the Armour
However, at 50, we must confront the structural weaknesses that continue to hold us back.
- The Ibadan-Centric Gravity: For too long, governance has been trapped in Ibadan. While Akala and Makinde have made strides, the economy is still dangerously unbalanced. A state cannot fly on one wing. The neglect of the economic potential of Ibarapa (tourism and agriculture) and Oke-Ogun (solid minerals and border trade) in the 80s and 90s created a migration crisis where everyone floods Ibadan for opportunities, straining the capital’s infrastructure.
- The Ghost of “Amala Politics”: This refers to the transactional nature of our politics where state resources are viewed as patronage for political godfathers rather than investment capital for the people. This structure killed the industries of the 70s and 80s (Exide Battery, Leyland, etc.). While the influence of individual godfathers has waned, the culture of patronage remains a drain on the treasury.
- Weak Fiscal Federalism: For 40 of its 50 years, Oyo State was lazily dependent on Abuja allocations. The drive for aggressive Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) is a recent phenomenon (post-2011). The state is still too vulnerable to oil price shocks. We have a Civil Service Economy where the market pulse is dictated by when the government pays salaries. This is a structural fragility.
The Political Economy of Poverty
Why do the strengths endure? Because the cultural identity of the Oyo person is rooted in sophistication. No governor, military or civilian, could fully dismantle the people’s demand for enlightenment and dignity. The Omoluabi ethos acts as a check on total tyranny.
Why do weaknesses persist? Because of the Political Economy of Poverty. When the electorate is kept on the margins of survival, vote-buying and stomach infrastructure become more politically profitable for leaders than long-term industrial planning. This creates a feedback loop: short-term populist leaders are rewarded at the polls, while those who ask for patience to build long-term structures are punished. This is the trap we must break.
The Next 50 Years
Oyo State at 50 stands at a critical inflection point. The era of relying on the Pacesetter title as a historical artifact is over. The institutional architecture is an asset, but it is aging.
To consolidate the next fifty years, we must intentionally switch to Governance. Government is the man in the Agodi Government House and Governance is the system that runs regardless of who is in the House.
We need institutions that are stronger than the Governor. We need an economic master plan that survives the transition from one administration to another. We need a legislative lock on development goals that prevents a new leader from abandoning the projects of the predecessor due to ego.
The trajectory of the last 50 years was defined by the personalities of men.The Architects, the Ideologues, the Tyrants, the Populists and the Builders. The trajectory of the next 50 years must be defined by the strength of our systems. We must integrate our rural economies, digitize our bureaucracy, and industrialize our agriculture. This requires clinical execution as reality always audits the book. The farmer who declares a surplus he did not grow will eventually be forced to dine on his own fiction, for we cannot feed the future with imaginary yields.
Only when our structural integrity matches our institutional memory can we truly say we have set the pace.
