•Atiku Abubakar
Former vice president and member of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Atiku Abubakar, has said that the party will participate in the 2026 governorship election in Ekiti State and win, urging the current occupant, Governor Biodun Oyebanji, to prepare a handover note.
This was just as members of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), Social Democratic Party (SDP), Labour Party (LP) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) have defected to the ADC in Ekiti, reports The Guardian.
Atiku, who spoke in Ado-Ekiti, at the weekend, during the unveiling of Ekiti State chapter of the ADC, expressed gratitude to the people of the state for their support for him as presidential candidate in the previous elections.
The former vice president, who was represented at the event by former Dean, Faculty of Pharmacy, Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Prof. Bayo Fakunle, assured the people that the ADC would rescue them from untold hardship, urging the people to support the party in the rescue mission.
Also speaking, the former deputy governor, Prof. Kolapo Olusola, who led the PDP bloc to the unveiling, said that the ADC was formed to chase away those who are destroying the country through maladministration, saying that the calibre of men and women in the party is capable of restoring the country back to prosperity.
In a significant development that could shake the political landscape of Ekiti State, prominent loyalists and aides of former Governors Ayodele Fayose, Kayode Fayemi, and Segun Oni have officially joined the ADC, in a move to further complicate the electoral fortunes of incumbent Governor Oyebanji come the 2026 gubernatorial election in the state.
It would be recalled that the immediate predecessor of Oyebanji, Dr Fayemi, another two-term governor of Ekiti, Fayose and Oni, a one-term governor, who later contested the 2022 governorship election against the incumbent under the platform of the SDP, had earlier thrown their weight behind Oyebanji’s candidature for the 2026 gubernatorial election in Ekiti.
However, some critical loyalists of these former governors, including former Deputy Governor, Chief of Staff, Secretary to the State Government and Head of Service under Fayose: Prof. Kolapo Eleka, Dipo Anisulowo, Modupe Alade and Gbenga Faseluka, among others, were officially at the unveiling of the ADC.
