THE RESET BUTTON: MAKINDE TAKES HIS ECONOMIC CASE AGAINST TINUBU TO OGUN, AHEAD OF 2027

LAGOS, August 4, 2026. Oyo State

Governor Seyi Makinde, now the presidential candidate of the Allied Peoples Movement, used the unveiling of his party’s Ogun State ticket on Monday to open a new front in the argument that will likely define the 2027 election season: whether Nigerians were prepared, or even preparable, for the economic reforms the Tinubu administration chose to implement together rather than in stages.

Makinde, represented at the Abeokuta event by APM national leader Babatunde Tijani, argued that the simultaneous removal of the fuel subsidy and the floating of the naira amounted to a double shock that no economy, developed or otherwise, could absorb without cushioning measures.

He questioned the state of household purchasing power and the volatility of the exchange rate, at one point asking pointedly, “who does that,” a line likely to travel further than the speech itself.

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He also drew a contrast between present-day insecurity and what he described as safer years past, framing both economic hardship and public safety as twin failures the APM intends to campaign on.

The occasion doubled as a show of political infrastructure. Alongside the presidential messaging, the party unveiled Deborah Abosede Akinlade as its deputy governorship candidate for Ogun State, together with its National and State Assembly candidates, and Makinde used the moment to point to what he called the developmental record of the current Oyo administration as evidence that the APM’s blueprint could work nationally.

Every incoming opposition carries the same temptation, the belief that naming a government’s failures is halfway to fixing them. Plato warned of a related danger in his account of the philosopher who mistakes the ability to diagnose the cave for the ability to lead others out of it.

Nigeria’s political history offers its own version of the caution: oppositions that thundered loudest against subsidy removal and currency float in previous cycles have, on taking office, often kept both policies substantially intact, discovering in government what looked simple from the podium rarely survives contact with a treasury.

That history does not settle whether Makinde’s specific criticisms are fair, only that the pattern of opposition economic rhetoric ahead of a general election is old enough in Nigeria to be read with both interest and caution.

Also speaking at the event, Ogun State APM Chairman Abayomi Sanyaolu rated the federal government’s performance at thirty five percent and urged voters to resist vote buying, while the party’s Ogun governorship candidate, Rotimi Babajide, pledged a grassroots-first approach to food production, job creation, education and healthcare if elected.

Neither the Presidency nor the All Progressives Congress had responded to Makinde’s remarks at the time of filing. With the 2027 campaign season now visibly under way, the coming months will show whether the exchanges remain confined to podiums in Abeokuta or draw a direct reply from Aso Rock.