Oyo State is too often governed as though it were a single city with some countryside attached. Ibadan is the capital, the commercial centre and the place where contracts are signed and announcements are made, and it deserves serious investment. But the state is far larger than its capital: thirty-three local government areas spread across five historic zones — Ibadan, Ibarapa, Oke-Ogun, Ogbomoso and Oyo — each with its own economy, its own grievances and its own sense of having been left to wait. The 2027 governorship race should be decided on a simple question: who can govern all of Oyo, not just the part visible from Agodi? Oriyomi Hamzat makes the strongest case of any contender.
The Complaint Every Zone Shares
Travel the state and the specifics change, but the complaint does not. In Oke-Ogun, it is the farm road that washes away every rainy season. In Ibarapa, it is the sense that security and basic services arrive late, if at all. In Ogbomoso, it is the feeling that a historic city has been treated as an afterthought. In Oyo town, it is a heritage of national importance that has never been turned into prosperity. Even in Ibadan’s outer local governments, residents watch the city centre receive attention their own communities rarely see. The common thread is a government that happens in one place and is announced everywhere else. Changing that is not a slogan. It is the central governance challenge of the state.
A Voice Heard Far From the Studio
Hamzat’s unusual preparation for this task is the years he has spent listening. Agidigbo FM’s broadcasts reach well beyond Ibadan, and the complaints that come through a popular call-in programme do not respect zonal boundaries: a farmer from a town in Oke-Ogun, a trader from Ogbomoso, a parent from Ibarapa worried about the school down the road. Most politicians encounter these communities in the weeks before an election and then return to the capital. A broadcaster whose working life has been built on hearing from them every day starts with a map of the state that is drawn from the ground up, not from the window of a convoy. That knowledge is not a campaign asset to be discarded after victory. It is the raw material of fair government.
Oke-Ogun: The Food Basket Without a Road
Oke-Ogun covers the largest share of Oyo’s landmass and much of its farming potential, from Saki and Iseyin to Igboho and Kishi. Its problem has never been the soil. It has been feeder roads that make transporting produce expensive or impossible, too little storage, and markets that pay farmers far less than the food is worth by the time it reaches Ibadan or Lagos. Iseyin’s aso-oke weavers carry a craft tradition admired across the country, yet the town has seen little of the investment that would turn heritage into a modern textile economy. A governor who treats Oke-Ogun as the engine of the state’s economy rather than a distant constituency could transform Oyo’s revenue and food security in a single term. Hamzat’s grassroots instinct points exactly in that direction.
Ogbomoso, Ibarapa and Oyo: Assets Waiting for Attention
Every zone holds something the state has underused. Ogbomoso is home to Ladoke Akintola University of Technology, an institution that could anchor a knowledge and technology corridor if government built the power, roads and partnerships around it. Ibarapa’s Igbo-Ora has long been celebrated for its remarkable number of twins, an identity that could support heritage tourism, while the zone’s farmland needs security and investment in equal measure. Oyo town, seat of the Alaafin and heir to one of West Africa’s great historical empires, should be one of Nigeria’s leading cultural destinations. None of this requires miracles. It requires a governor who sees these places as assets rather than as zones to be pacified with a handful of appointments.
Fairness You Can Measure
Balanced development is easy to promise and easy to fake. The way to make it real is to make it measurable. A Hamzat administration is well placed to publish the capital budget zone by zone and local government by local government, with a public tracker showing every project’s cost, contractor and progress, so that a resident of Saki or Idere can see exactly what their community has received. Town hall meetings and even sittings of the executive council could rotate across the five zones, so that government is physically present where its decisions land. For a man whose career has been built on public conversation with ordinary people, that kind of openness would be an extension of habit, not a concession.
Breaking the Patronage Map
The deeper reason the zones feel neglected is that Oyo politics has too often distributed development the way it distributes patronage: towards whichever areas deliver the most influential power brokers. Communities without a heavyweight in the room simply wait. Hamzat’s political strength does not come from that system. It comes from a direct relationship with listeners and supporters across the state, which gives him the freedom to allocate resources by need rather than by the loudest political godfather. Voters in every zone should recognise what that independence could mean for them: projects decided by the condition of the road, not the connections of the person asking for it.
One State, Not One City
A successful Oyo State in 2031 would not be one where Ibadan gleams while Oke-Ogun’s farmers still cannot move their harvest, Ogbomoso still feels forgotten and Ibarapa still waits for security. It would be one where a young person in any of the thirty-three local governments can see a future without leaving home. That vision requires a governor who already knows the whole state, who has heard its complaints for years and who owes his rise to ordinary people rather than to a narrow circle of power. In 2027, Oriyomi Hamzat is the candidate who fits that description, and every corner of Oyo State has reason to take his candidacy seriously.
This article represents an editorial opinion based on publicly available information.
