(Being Daily Trust Editorial)
The governorship election scheduled to be held in Ekiti State this Saturday, June 20, presents another crucial moment for Nigeria’s electoral journey.
Though occurring in one of the country’s smallest states by voter strength, with just over one million registered voters, the exercise carries an electoral significance that far outweighs its geographical footprint.
Occurring alongside legislative by-elections across six states to fill vacant seats in the National and State Assemblies, this weekend’s polls represent another litmus test for the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) under its new chairman, Professor Joash Amupitan (SAN).
While the Commission has conducted other standalone elections since the new Chairman assumed office, those exercises, such as the Anambra gubernatorial election in November 2025 and the FCT Area Council election, as well as legislative by-elections in February, were already in advanced stages of preparation under the previous leadership when he took the helm.
The Ekiti election, however, could be considered to be entirely his own to coordinate, supervise, and deliver. For Professor Amupitan, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, whose appointment was greeted with expectations of legal exactitude and institutional reform, this is the moment to demonstrate to a sceptical public that INEC’s operational integrity can be vouched for.
With the 2027 general elections visible on the horizon, the commission must use the Ekiti poll and the concurrent by-elections to restore declining public faith in Nigeria’s democratic architecture.
It is encouraging that the 13 political parties and their candidates participating in the Ekiti poll have signed a peace accord under the auspices of the National Peace Committee, pledging to maintain decorum before, during, and after the exercise.
We urge the candidates, most notably the incumbent Governor Biodun Oyebanji of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Dr Wole Oluyede of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), and Dare Bejide of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), to abide strictly by the letter and spirit of this commitment.
Political actors must elevate the collective interest of the Ekiti people above personal or partisan ambitions. The 2022 election that ushered in the current administration was widely commended for being largely peaceful and devoid of systemic rancour. Nigerians expect nothing less this time around.
However, a deeply worrisome trend shadows this election: the persistent and alarming decline in voter turnout. A historical review of election statistics in Ekiti State reveals an unsettling paradox. While the number of registered voters has climbed steadily over the last 12 years, from 733,766 in 2014 to 909,585 in 2018 and reaching 989,224 in 2022, actual voter participation has moved in the opposite direction. For this Saturday’s poll, INEC has disclosed that registered voters have breached the one-million mark, standing at 1,059,360. This represents a substantial 44 per cent expansion of the voter registry since 2014.
Yet, the number of accredited voters continues to pale in comparison to these figures. In 2014, only 369,257 voters were accredited. While accreditation ticked upward to 405,861 during the intensely contested 2018 cycle, it plummeted to a dismal 363,438 in 2022. This means that in the last governorship election, a paltry 37 per cent of registered voters bothered to participate in choosing their leader.
This expanding gulf between registration and actual voting points to deep-seated political apathy, cynicism, and perhaps a growing feeling among citizens that their votes do not count.
We expect that political parties, civil society organisations, and INEC have recognised this dangerous trend and intensified their voter education campaigns. The true impact of those efforts will become apparent on Saturday.
We also appeal to the electorate in Ekiti and, indeed, in the constituencies across Rivers, Enugu, Nasarawa, Ondo, Kano, and Kebbi states, where by-elections are holding, to conduct themselves with high civic responsibility. Voters must resist the degrading influence of vote selling and buying. The decisions made at the polling units this weekend will shape the quality of governance, security, and economic well-being for years to come.
For these reasons, Daily Trust emphasises that the success of this weekend’s elections cannot be measured solely by the absence of violence or the smoothness of logistics. Success must be defined by the transparency of the processes, the absolute neutrality of security agencies, and a measurable rebound in citizen participation.
Professor Amupitan and his team have been handed a clean slate in Ekiti and the legislative constituencies. They must deliver an election that serves as a benchmark for credibility, proving to Nigerians that the road to 2027 is not entirely fraught and can still be built on a foundation of integrity, rather than institutional failure.
