Why Makinde wants 2027 to be ‘APC VS. Nigerians’

Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo wants Nigerians to look at the 2027 presidential election and see something bigger than another contest between political parties.He wants them to see the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC, on one side and Nigerians on the other.

That was the striking message the governor carried to Katsina last Tuesday, where he declared: “It won’t be APC versus APM, or APM versus ADC, or ADC versus NDC. It will be APC versus Nigerians.”

The choice of words was significant. Makinde is the presidential candidate of the Allied Peoples Movement, APM, yet he is deliberately refusing to make APM the immediate centre of his argument.

Instead, he is trying to make the election a referendum on the party controlling the Federal Government; and on whether Nigerians want to give it another four years.

It is a potentially useful calculation for a candidate whose party does not have the national political machinery of the ruling APC.

But it also carries a difficult question: if the election becomes a contest between APC and dissatisfied Nigerians, why should those Nigerians necessarily choose APM?

That is the political gamble behind Makinde’s Katsina message.

Changing the question

Makinde appears to understand that a conventional party-versus-party contest could force APM to spend too much of the campaign explaining itself before it can challenge the incumbent.

An anti-APC contest changes that equation. Instead of asking voters first to embrace APM, Makinde wants them to ask whether they are satisfied with the APC government. If the answer is no, his campaign then has to present his ticket as the vehicle through which that dissatisfaction can be converted into votes.

His criticism of President Bola Tinubu’s handling of his recent absence from the country fits neatly into that strategy.

Makinde invoked Section 145 of the Constitution and compared presidential conduct with his own practice in Oyo State.

“I have looked at the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and, of course, as a state governor, I also operate under that Constitution. Anytime I have to travel out, not for work but on vacation, for more than 21 days, I transmit power to the Deputy Governor. Why is this not happening at the national level?” Makinde said.

Section 145(1) requires the President, when proceeding on vacation or otherwise unable to discharge his functions, to transmit a written declaration to the Senate President and Speaker of the House.

The 21-day provision in subsection 2 concerns what the National Assembly may do if such a declaration has not been transmitted within that period. It does not mean the President’s obligation begins after 21 days.

Makinde then turned the constitutional argument into a promise about how he would govern.

“I promise you that, as your President, I will follow the Constitution to the letter. If I am not going to be available, if I am on vacation, I will transmit power to the Vice President. Record this and hold me accountable,” he said.

The significance of the argument is less about the length of the President’s absence than the political frame Makinde is constructing: a government that must account for its decisions, comply with the Constitution and explain its actions to citizens.

The same approach runs into the economy. The Federal Government says the removal of the petrol subsidy and foreign-exchange reforms have created additional fiscal space. Finance Minister Taiwo Oyedele said subsidy savings between June 2023 and December 2025 amounted to N15.8 trillion, while incremental Federal Government resources reached N20.4 trillion.

But for households confronting higher prices and living costs, the question is what those savings mean in daily life.

That gives Makinde another opening. He can accept the argument that the reforms have increased government resources while asking whether those resources have translated sufficiently into security, jobs, infrastructure and purchasing power. His objective is to turn that gap into a political question about the APC.

The 2023 warning

The North-West is particularly important to that calculation. In Katsina, Atiku Abubakar defeated Tinubu by 6,762 votes in 2023, polling 489,045 votes against Tinubu’s 482,283. Rabiu Kwankwaso received 69,386 votes.

Across the North-West, Atiku won Kaduna, Katsina, Kebbi and Sokoto; Tinubu carried Jigawa and Zamfara, while Kwankwaso won Kano.

The figures do not automatically translate into support for Makinde. What they demonstrate is something more basic: the APC’s hold on the region is not uniform, and the presidential vote can be divided among competing political forces.

That makes the region useful territory for a candidate attempting to construct an anti-incumbency coalition.

Makinde’s challenge, however, is to make that coalition belong to him. His running mate, Lawal Daura, is part of that calculation.

APM National Chairman Dantele presented Daura as a North-West answer to the security crisis.

“We have your own son from the North-West, particularly Katsina, the Vice presidential candidate, Lawal Daura who is a security guru and he will be there to address security challenges across the North-West and Nigeria at large,” Dantele said.

“Let our farmers return to their farms. Let our children go to school freely. Let Nigerians coexist peacefully and go about their normal businesses. We must put an end to insecurity and hunger, improve access to education, and eradicate poverty.”

Daura himself described the mood the ticket hopes to exploit.

“The North-West, and indeed Nigeria at large, is yearning for reseting Nigeria,” Daura said.

The ticket is therefore trying to combine two appeals: Makinde as the face of governance and institutional change, and Daura as the North-West connection with security placed at the centre of the regional pitch.

But the campaign still has to move from political symbolism to policy. Calling Daura a ‘security guru’ does not by itself explain how the ticket would protect farmers, schools and communities, reform policing or finance a broader security architecture.

That gap becomes important because the argument is not simply that APC should be rejected. Makinde must also demonstrate what comes after the rejection.

The problem with an anti-APC election

This is where Makinde’s strategy becomes more complicated. The APC can be made the target without APM becoming the automatic beneficiary.

A voter can be unhappy with the ruling party and still choose another opposition platform. Indeed, the more the election is framed as a referendum on APC, the greater the number of political actors that can attempt to capture the resulting dissatisfaction.

Makinde therefore needs to perform two political operations at once.

First, he has to persuade Nigerians that the election is fundamentally about the record of the APC government.

Then he has to persuade those same voters that APM is the vehicle through which they should express their verdict.

His appeal for voters to obtain their Permanent Voter Cards reflects that calculation.

“Please get your PVC and show the APC that Nigeria is bigger than individuals. It is bigger than even the systems that have held us down,” Makinde said.

The language deliberately puts the voter ahead of the party. But there is a second message beneath it: That citizens can punish the ruling party through the ballot box. The unresolved question is where that punishment ultimately lands.

Selling the Alternative

This is why Makinde’s record in Oyo State matters to the strategy.

If he only campaigns against Tinubu, he risks becoming another opposition politician asking voters to reject the incumbent without establishing why his own ticket should receive their support.

His Oyo record gives him something with which to answer that question.

The state’s 2024 budget stood at N434.2 billion, with projected internally generated revenue of N72 billion. Education received N90.65 billion, representing about 20.88 per cent of the budget. The Oyo government also reported 118.07 kilometres of roads delivered in the year preceding its 2025 budget presentation, including 76.67 kilometres of the Iseyin-Fapote-Ogbomoso Road.

Those figures provide Makinde with a record to put beside his criticism of the Federal Government.

But the presidential argument inevitably becomes harder at that point. Running Oyo is different from running a federation responsible for defence, foreign affairs, monetary policy and the distribution of federal resources.

So the next stage of Makinde’s campaign cannot simply be about making APC unpopular. It has to establish that his proposed ‘reset’ can operate at federal scale.

That is why his promise to return to the North-West matters.

“This is the town hall for the Northwest. I am still coming back here in Katsina, Kaduna, Kano, Kebbi, Zamfara and Jigawa to campaign on a state-by-state basis,” Makinde said.

He is effectively taking the argument beyond Katsina: APC may be the target, but APM wants to be the beneficiary.

That is the central calculation behind the phrase ‘APC versus Nigerians’.

Makinde is trying to remove the election from the familiar terrain of party labels and place the ruling party’s record at the centre of the ballot.

The strategy gives him a larger potential constituency than APM alone can provide. But it also creates the campaign’s biggest unanswered question.

If Nigerians decide that 2027 should indeed be about APC versus them, Makinde still has to convince them that when they cast that anti-incumbency vote, APM is where it should land.