Olubadan anointed candidate talk is dismissed as Oba Rasidi Adewolu Ladoja receives PDP’s Hazeem Gbolarumi and urges a peaceful Oyo 2027 race
The Olubadan of Ibadanland, Oba Rasidi Adewolu Ladoja, told a Peoples Democratic Party delegation at his palace in Ibadan on Monday, 14 September 2026, that he has no Olubadan anointed candidate for the 2027 Oyo State governorship election.
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The former governor of the state spoke while receiving the PDP gubernatorial candidate, Barrister Hazeem Gbolarumi, at Olubadan Palace, Oke-Aremo.
Barrister Hazeem Gbolarumi, a former deputy governor, arrived with the PDP State Chairman, Professor Abdulrahman Akinoso, the State Secretary, Dr Biola Olanipekun, and other party chieftains.
He asked for royal blessing and said he was the first governorship candidate to make the call. “I am here to seek the royal blessing from the Olubadan. No one has come here. I am the first person to come here,” he said. He also recalled that Oba Rasidi Adewolu Ladoja “was the one who brought PDP to Oyo State in 1998.”
Professor Abdulrahman Akinoso said the visit was meant to come before campaigns begin. “We said that it is necessary for us to seek the support of the royal father before we start our campaigns. That is why we are here.”
Oba Rasidi Adewolu Ladoja declined a private endorsement. “I greet you all. I want you to know that all the candidates are from the same house. I have no anointed candidate. All of you are from the same house. All the gubernatorial candidates are from my house. You are children of the Olubadan.” He added that power is given by God, asked candidates to campaign peacefully, and warned against violence. “Your enemy today can be your best friend tomorrow.” Other reports of the same audience have him urging issue-based talk on poverty, education, healthcare and land, and placing every hopeful in the same household, including “No. 28 Ondo Street, Bodija.”
The setting is not a neutral drawing room. Oba Rasidi Adewolu Ladoja is newly established as the 44th Olubadan after the death of Oba Owolabi Olakulehin in July 2025 and a coronation this month at Mapo Hall, attended by President Bola Tinubu and Governor Seyi Makinde.
Before the crown he was a PDP governor, elected in 2003, and a senator. Palace language of “all my children” is traditional.
It is also useful politics for a monarch who once owned a party machine and now claims distance from any ticket.
Barrister Hazeem Gbolarumi’s own path is factional. He won the Oyo PDP primary in May with 3,615 votes to 22 for Barrister Beulah Adeoye, then collected a certificate of return in June.
The state’s PDP has been split, with Governor Seyi Makinde aligned toward the Allied People’s Movement while the Gbolarumi camp has claimed the Molete secretariat as the “authentic” party.
A palace greeting does not settle that fight. It does give the visitor photographs and a blessing that stops short of a pledge.
Ibadan elections often turn on who can claim the city’s first stool. Monday’s message was crafted to deny that prize to any one camp.
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Whether later visits from other parties draw the same homily will test if the Olubadan’s neutrality holds, or whether “no anointed candidate” is only the first courtesy of a long season.
