MAKINDE, STOP BRAGGING

By Segun Dipe

By any standard, what came out of the Makinde-Daura Presidential Campaign Organisation last weekend was pure political braggadocio. The declaration that Governor Seyi Makinde, now presidential candidate of the Allied Peoples Movement, will defeat President Bola Ahmed Tinubu in twelve battleground states in January 2027 is not strategy. It is noise.

We have seen the press statement signed by Hon. Richard Ihediwa, Director of Strategic Communications, listing Oyo, Kaduna, Rivers, Plateau, Borno, Enugu, Bauchi, Sokoto, Delta, Kano, Adamawa and Lagos, plus the FCT, as the states where Makinde will floor Tinubu. One reads it and wonders if the campaign is living in the same Nigeria the rest of us live in.

First, consider the platform. Seyi Makinde made his name in the Peoples Democratic Party. Today he is not even flying PDP’s flag. He is flying APM, a party most Nigerians only heard of when it went to court in 2023. You do not defeat a sitting President who controls a national structure like the APC, with thirty-two governors, federal allocation, and a tested campaign machine, in Lagos, Kano, Rivers, Borno, Sokoto and Delta, with a party that barely has ward executives in half of those states. Politics is not done on Instagram.

Second, the twelve states themselves expose fear, not strength. Lagos is Tinubu’s political home since 1999. Borno is Vice President Shettima’s base. Sokoto, Kano and Kaduna are the core north-west where APC governors have just endorsed Tinubu. Rivers is where the APC structure has just been rebuilt with federal might. To claim you will win all of them at once is not confidence, it is comedy.

Then there is the matter of incumbency, which the MDPCO dismisses so lightly when it says no amount of manoeuvring or abuse of incumbency can stop Makinde. Anyone who has played politics in Nigeria knows incumbency is not a joke. President Tinubu will enter January 2027 with the budget, the security architecture and the bully pulpit of 32 states behind him. You do not neutralize that by issuing a statement from Abuja challenging him to travel by road to see bad roads.

And this is where we must ask Makinde to look in the mirror before lecturing the Federal Government about accountability.

Nigerians have not forgotten the questions still hanging over funds in Oyo State. The N30 billion intervention fund released by the Federal Government in November 2024 after the Bodija explosion in Ibadan. Former Governor Ayodele Fayose alleged N50 billion was released. The Oyo Government said only N30 billion came and that it was untouched in an Infrastructure Support Account at FirstBank. Yet a petition to the EFCC alleged that only about N4.5 billion reached victims while the rest remained largely unaccounted for. The government says it spent N24.6 billion from its own resources, but up till today, citizens are asking for a full public audit.

What about the internally generated revenue through the Park Management System, PMS? Citizens and commentators have repeatedly asked for documentary audit reports on how much is collected daily from tickets across the 33 local governments, how much goes to the local governments, and what is the role of private individuals allegedly collecting over N60 million monthly while local governments share a paltry sum. The government has not provided clear published accounts.

Just two days ago, a report showed Oyo’s borrowings doubled to N368.2 billion in one year, with three-quarters of its 2026 loans drawn in three months, with restatements in its audited accounts that even the auditor-general’s unqualified certificate noted was based only on available documents. No audit queries with figures were published.

Before you accuse the Federal Government of spending N250 billion NLNG dividends meant for states, as you did at the stakeholders’ meeting in Ibadan on October 16, you should first account for the billions that passed through your own hands in Oyo.

You want to RESET Nigeria? Nigerians are asking: can you first give a proper account of Oyo? Where are the receipts? Where are the audits?

Seyi Makinde is by many measures a fairly successful governor. But the presidency is not governorship writ large. To tell your followers that you will defeat Tinubu in twelve states because young people are excited online is to insult the intelligence of the electorate.

The 2027 election will not be won by who brags louder in the press. It will be won by structure, performance and national acceptability. On all three, Makinde’s APM adventure still falls short.

So, Makinde, stop bragging. Go back to Oyo, finish your second term well, publish your accounts, clear the questions over Bodija funds and PMS collections, build your party from the ward up, and then come and talk about twelve states. For now, this twelve-state defeat talk is just hot air. And Nigerians are tired of hot air.

Segun Dipe writes on politics and governance.