If a state earns its nickname, then Oyo under Governor Seyi Makinde has finally lived up to its new one. Not the “Pacesetter State.” The Wild, Wild West. The Oriire terrorists did not just issue demands last week. They issued a verdict. And the verdict reads: this government negotiates from a kneeling position, even when it claims to stand.
Governance is the monopoly of violence plus the monopoly of anticipation. Makinde lost both. For five years the administration sold a story of Amotekun trucks, data-driven security, and a chief security officer who would sleep less so citizens could sleep more. Yet Oriire’s gang bypassed local chiefs, bypassed the DPO, bypassed the small ransom-for-the-poor model, and sent their invoice straight to the House of Assembly. That is not banditry. That is an audit. They audited Oyo’s chain of command and concluded the weak link sits in Agodi Government House. When criminals stop fearing the police and start petitioning the Speaker, the state has become a stagecoach and the governor is not on the horse. He is in the passenger seat counting headlines.
Makinde’s security model has been PR first, policy second. New Amotekun uniforms before new intelligence. Helicopters for photo ops while forest corridors from Oke-Ogun to Ibarapa remain unmapped and unmanned. The Oriire list exposes the bill. ₦1 billion offshore is the price for five years of treating security as a campaign jingle. Two Hilux trucks and weapons is what it costs when your own Amotekun still begs for fuel. Demands for Sharia law and prison releases are the invoice you get when bandits watch your government spend more time fighting the opposition than mapping Old Oyo National Park. A governor who cannot secure a corridor cannot claim he secured a legacy. The Wild West wasn’t created by outlaws. It was created by sheriffs who thought badges replaced bullets.
The House of Assembly, with Makinde’s backing, rejected the demands. That is the bare minimum, and it came only after the demands proved the state had already been negotiated with. The terrorists set the agenda. The Assembly reacted. That is governance in reverse. Makinde’s administration calls it strength. Citizens call it late. You do not get credit for refusing to pay a kidnapper after you left the front door open, removed the neighborhood watch, and told the family you were monitoring the situation. The real irresponsibility is not that he won’t meet the bandits’ terms. It’s that his years of a “holistic security approach” produced a gang confident enough to write terms at all. In the Wild West, the most damning indictment of a sheriff isn’t that he lost a gunfight. It’s that outlaws thought the town was worth sending a letter.
While Oriire was drafting its demands, the governor was drafting 2027 alignments. While forest boys were requesting Hilux trucks, the state was commissioning bus terminals and rebranding town halls. Infrastructure is not a substitute for authority. A new road that bandits control is just a faster escape route. Leadership irresponsibility here is simple arithmetic: every hour spent on presidential visibility is an hour not spent on forest visibility. Every naira spent on media teams denying insecurity is a naira not spent on drones, informant networks, or paying Amotekun on time. The terrorists did the math. They realized Oyo is rich in speeches, poor in surveillance. So they sent their own speech, and it changed the mood of the whole state.
Seyi Makinde promised to be the Chief Security Officer who would know and act. Oriire just graded that promise, and the score is written in demands for Sharia and offshore accounts. When a gang thinks it can legislate, it means the legislature has gone mute. When a gang asks for Agodi inmates, it means they believe the governor’s key to the prison is already on their keychain. So welcome to the Wild, Wild West. The birth wasn’t announced by gunshots. It was announced by a PDF of demands read on the floor of the House. The midwife was not a bandit. It was years of reactive governance, of confusing silence for strategy, and of mistaking popularity for protection.
Makinde cannot meet these demands. Nobody should. But he already met the condition that produced them: a state loud on Twitter, quiet in the forest. In the Wild West, that is how towns get renamed. Pacesetter to Prey. And the cost of that renaming is the appetite of every citizen who now reads the news and finds it difficult to eat.
