With Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State’s recent Presidential Declaration on the platform of the Allied Peoples Movement, the era of a monolithic Southwest voting pattern may be fading. Folalumi Alaran reports.
There was a time when the Southwest stood as Nigeria’s most predictable political fortress, ideologically coherent, electorally disciplined, and largely united behind a common progressive identity.
From the days of the late sage, Chief Obafemi Awolowo in the Action Group in the First Republic to the ascendancy of the modern All Progressives Congress, the region cultivated a reputation for bloc voting rooted in shared history, cultural solidarity and strategic political calculation.
But politics, like history, is never static. The emergence of Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo state as a national political force appears to be testing the old assumptions that once defined Southwest electoral behavior.
Makinde’s gradual but deliberate entry into the broader national equation signals more than personal ambition; it represents a potential ideological and political realignment within the Yoruba political landscape.
