Oriyomi Abdulrahman Hamzat, the Accord governorship candidate for the 2027 election in Oyo State, has earned a Master of Arts degree in Peace, Security and Humanitarian Studies from the University of Ibadan.
Hamzat, founder and chairman of Ibadan-based Agidigbo 88.7 FM, obtained the postgraduate qualification after earning a Bachelor of Arts degree in Linguistics and Language Arts from the same university. He received his bachelor’s degree in November 2023 during the university’s 75th anniversary convocation.
The new degree adds to an academic record that includes a National Diploma and a Higher National Diploma. Hamzat attended Iroko Community Grammar School and the Oyo State School of Sciences, Pade. His earlier tertiary studies included Geology and Mass Communication at The Polytechnic, Ibadan and its former Eruwa campus, now Adeseun Ogundoyin Polytechnic.
Hamzat spent more than two decades in journalism and broadcasting before entering partisan politics. He worked with several media organisations, including The Guardian, the Broadcasting Corporation of Oyo State, the Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria, Raypower, Petals FM and 32 FM.
He went on to establish Agidigbo FM in Ibadan, where programmes such as Kokoro Alate gave residents a platform to raise concerns and discuss issues affecting their communities.
In previous interviews, Hamzat credited his late father, Alhaji Asimiyu Adekunle Hamzat, a journalist with the Nigerian Television Authority, with influencing his choice of career. He has also credited his mother with shaping his interest in humanitarian work.
Hamzat declared his governorship ambition in January 2026 on the platform of Accord. He is seeking to succeed Governor Seyi Makinde, whose tenure ends in May 2027.
For Hamzat, whose postgraduate studies cover peacebuilding, conflict management and humanitarian response, one question for the campaign is how that training would inform policies for children whose schooling is disrupted by insecurity or poverty.
The Makinde administration has listed teacher recruitment, classroom rehabilitation, construction of model schools and efforts to return out-of-school children to classrooms among its education interventions. Those programmes give voters a basis to ask where access has improved, which communities still lack classrooms and teachers, and what progress schools have made in literacy and numeracy.
For Hamzat and other candidates, the policy questions include how they would deploy and retain teachers in underserved communities, make classrooms accessible to children with disabilities and link vocational training to local employment. Candidates’ plans for state-owned tertiary institutions, bursaries and scholarships will also matter to families weighing the cost of further education.
Ahead of the election, voters can assess those proposals against three practical details: which schools and communities would benefit first, how the programmes would be funded, and what results the next administration would publish.
