Oyo governorship turns two-horse race as four parties endorse Seyi Makinde

Four major opposition political parties in Oyo State have finally announced an alliance for Saturday’s governorship election.

The four parties are the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), African Democratic Congress (ADC), Zenith Labour Party (ZLP) and the Social Democratic Party (SDP). These four, alongside the governing All Progressives Congress (APC) and the Action Democratic Party (ADP), were considered the frontrunners for the governorship election.

On Monday, they signed an agreement to present the gubernatorial candidate of the PDP, Seyi Makinde, as a consensus candidate for the March 9 election.

The coalition meeting to form an alliance to tackle the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) started few days to the presidential and National Assembly elections. There was confusion over the weekend when two of the parties, ADC and ZLP, refuted that an agreement had been reached to support Mr Makinde.

This was, however, resolved on Monday with the signing of the agreement.

PREMIUM TIMES learnt that the discussions for the alliance was started by a former governor of the state who is the candidate of the Action Democratic Party (ADP), Adebayo Alao-Akala.

Mr Alao-Akala had approached his former boss, Rashidi Ladoja, on the need for him to lead other opposition political parties to defeat the APC.

Mr Alao-Akala was deputy governor when Mr Ladoja was elected governor in 2003.

But, Mr Alao-Akala after a meeting with a former governor of Lagos State, Bola Tinubu, abandoned the group and aligned with the Adebayo Adelabu of the APC.

The Director General of the PDP campaign, Bayo Lawal, and his counterparts in ADC, Bashiru Lawal; ZLP, MWaheed Akanbi and the head, SDP campaign committee, M. A. Oke jointly signed the agreement to tackle Mr Adelabu and APC with a promise to make details of the agreement public later.

The signatories in the document obtained by PREMIUM TIMES Monday afternoon said that all the parties involved have agreed to present Mr Makinde as their sole candidate.

“Agreement has been reached by members of the coalition parties to adopt Engineer Seyi Makinde as its gubernatorial candidate in the forthcoming gubernatorial election in the state.

“Full details will be made available later on,” the parties said.

With this endorsement of Makinde, the gubernatorial election is now a two-horse race between Mr Adelabu of APC and Mr Makinde of PDP.