The talk in Ibadan’s markets, inside the danfo buses rattling between Bodija and Dugbe, even at the pepper-soup joints where pensioners linger over Makinde’s free health cards—it’s all shifting. People aren’t just replaying how the governor fixed the Moniya-Iseyin road or kept teachers’ salaries flowing. They’re asking, quietly at first, who might hold that thread after him.
One name keeps surfacing: Abdulsabur Abiola Olawore. To most, he’s not a party loudmouth or a billboard face. He’s the guy who left Oyo years ago, worked abroad in rooms where deals and policies get hashed out, then started popping up back home at youth training sessions in Mapo and community town halls in Ogbomoso. Someone who talks about export ties and skills workshops in the same breath.
I met a young tailor in Iwo Road last week who mentioned Olawore almost offhand: “He came here, asked about our machines, what we actually needed. No cameras, no 50-person entourage.” Another man, older, grumbled that Oyo politics isn’t won by “quiet CVs”—it’s won by structures, by who can deliver wards in Ibarapa when the rain’s heavy and loyalty gets tested. He’s right. Olawore still has to prove he can move beyond goodwill to ground game.
Makinde’s shadow is long—infrastructure, schools, security—and Oyo doesn’t want a sequel that stalls. Olawore’s backers say his international experience and his community work could bridge that generational gap voters keep muttering about. Critics say he’s untested, that name recognition doesn’t fill potholes.
For now, he’s a story people repeat differently depending on the side of the street they’re standing on: technocrat with fresh ideas to one, outsider without a machine to another. Come primary season, Oyo will decide which version sticks.
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