Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State has chosen the wrong season to play victim. In the middle of a national hardship debate, he blamed the removal of fuel subsidy and the floatation of the naira for the “untold hardship” Nigerians are facing. Nigerians answered back, and they were unsparing. They did not see a governor speaking for the people. They saw a governor speaking against the very policy that made his government the richest it has ever been.
This is not opposition. This is rascality — the politics of collecting unprecedented money from Abuja and then turning around to curse Abuja for the pain that made that money possible.
The Windfall No One Can Deny
Let the numbers speak first, because they expose the disingenuousness.
From June 2019 to May 2022, in Makinde’s first term, Oyo State averaged ₦5 billion to ₦7 billion monthly from FAAC. That was ₦75 billion to ₦95 billion a year. Money was tight. Choices were hard.
Then subsidy was removed and the naira was floated in May 2023. In just the first 27 months of Makinde’s second term, from May 2023 to August 2025, Oyo State’s net federal allocation alone hit ₦727.21 billion. The state government took ₦352.15 billion. The 33 local governments took ₦375.06 billion. Monthly inflows jumped to between ₦17.8 billion and over ₦21 billion. That is a 3x to 4x jump, and it was driven entirely by post-subsidy revenue scaling.
The windfall did not stop at FAAC. In the first half of 2025 alone, from January to June, Oyo State generated ₦253.67 billion in VAT. This was driven by the FG’s decision to cut its own share from 15% to 10% and to shift to a derivation-based distribution model. It was one of the largest VAT harvests in the state’s history.
So the federal policy Makinde now calls wicked is the same policy that flooded his treasury. To lament the cause while celebrating the effect is not leadership. It is hypocrisy.
The Only Question That Matters
With ₦727 billion in 27 months, plus ₦253 billion in VAT in 6 months, Nigerians asked one question: where is the impact?
Subsidy removal was sold as “pain now, gain later” — with the “gain” supposed to come from states using new resources to cushion citizens. Transport, health, food, education, SME support. That was the bargain.
But in Oyo, the streets are not seeing the bargain. Cost of transport remains punishing. Food prices have not dropped. Public hospitals are still under-equipped. Public schools still struggle. The state that now earns ₦20 billion+ monthly has no signature mass transit, no large-scale food intervention, no visible program to take the sting out of inflation.
Instead, what we see is press conferences, road commissions, and the familiar politics of optics. Billions are coming in, but there is no corresponding billboard of relief for the poor. That is why the public anger was immediate. People are not asking for perfection. They are asking: “Governor, you have more money than any Oyo governor before you. What have you done with it to reduce our pain?”
Silence, or deflection, is not an answer.
Rascality: Weaponizing Pain You Are Benefiting From
This is where the rascality lies. Makinde wants to have it both ways.
He wants to be counted among the biggest beneficiaries of subsidy removal in FAAC history, and at the same time wants to lead the war against President Tinubu for authorizing it. He wants the money, but not the responsibility that comes with the money.
That is the definition of political opportunism. It is easy to blame Abuja. It is harder to account for Ibadan. It is easier to grandstand about hardship than to show your own budget for palliatives, for transport subsidies, for food security.
A leader does not collect the dividend of a policy and then pretend he is a victim of the policy. A leader either rejects the money on principle, or uses the money to solve the problem. Makinde has done neither. He has taken the money and outsourced the blame.
The Bigger Damage
Beyond Oyo, this posture does damage to public trust. When governors who are swimming in new allocation join the chorus of “Abuja is wicked” without showing what they did with the windfall, they make it impossible to have an honest national conversation.
They reduce governance to PR. They turn hardship into a talking point, not a problem to solve. And they teach citizens that no matter how much money comes to the state, nothing will change at the grassroots. That is how cynicism is manufactured.
Conclusion: From Lamentation to Accountability
No one is saying subsidy removal has not caused pain. It has. But pain without a plan is cruelty, and a plan without money is a lie. For the first time in decades, states have the money.
Governor Makinde now has the largest fiscal envelope in Oyo’s history. The question is no longer “what did Abuja do?” The question is “what did you do with what Abuja gave you?”
Until he can point to concrete, measurable projects that have reduced cost of living for an average Oyo resident — subsidized buses, functional primary healthcare, school feeding at scale, direct support to farmers and traders — his lamentations will continue to sound like crocodile tears.
You cannot eat from the table of subsidy removal and then set the table on fire. Oyo people deserve better than a governor who profits from policy and politicizes its pain.
They deserve receipts, not rhetoric.
