Ahead of the official flag-off of his presidential campaign in Jos, Oyo State Governor and standard-bearer of the Allied Peoples’ Movement (APM), Seyi Makinde, has declared that ongoing reform efforts in Nigeria are bound to fail, insisting that only a comprehensive national reset can pull the country back from the brink.
Speaking on Sunday during a live political programme on Jay FM 101.9 in Jos, Plateau State, Makinde stated that the compounding economic, security, and governance failures plaguing Nigeria have rendered incremental policy adjustments obsolete.
The governor argued that reforms only succeed when the baseline strengths of a system outweigh its defects. According to him, Nigeria has reached a tipping point where systemic dysfunction far outweighs functionality.
“When you talk about reform, it means that there is something good in the system that you want to improve upon. But when the bad outweighs the good, you need to take a different course of action.”
“If what you have in the system is only about 20 per cent of what you expected, you don’t need to continue tweaking it. You need to press the reset button, shut it down and reboot it. That is what Nigeria needs at this point. Reform will not work in the present environment,” Makinde said.
Makinde, who emphasized that he entered politics out of concern for the nation’s survival rather than personal ambition, framed his proposed Reset Agenda around the immediate economic welfare of ordinary citizens.
He dismissed abstract macroeconomic indicators, arguing that progress should be measured by whether citizens can afford to feed themselves and meet basic daily needs rather than statistical figures on foreign reserves or inflation.
He pledged that an APM administration under his watch would move the country away from superficial fixes toward aggressive local production, mass education, entrepreneurship, and skills acquisition to reverse rising youth unemployment.
The Presidential hopeful also applied his reset philosophy to national security, insisting that the centralized police structure has collapsed and must be broken down through the introduction of state police.
Referencing historical context, Makinde noted that Nigeria’s regions attained self-government at different stages in the 1950s, arguing that states ready to fund and establish their own police formations with robust anti-abuse safeguards should be permitted to do so immediately rather than waiting for an unworkable nationwide rollout.
Pointing to his administration’s governance approach in Oyo State, from the creation of the Amotekun security outfit to resisting total economic lockdowns during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, Makinde reiterated that leadership in a crisis requires truth, accountability, and policies grounded in science, data, and human empathy.
He warned that without an immediate and radical reset of opportunities for the country’s youthful population, Nigeria risks spiraling into deeper instability, promising that his campaign will offer citizens an honest reckoning with the nation’s realities rather than empty political promises.
