Politics
NO PRESS RELEASE CAN CAMPAIGN FOR ATIKU
… A Rejoinder to the So-Called ADC Ekiti Statement of 23 October 2026
By Aare Amerijoye
Ekiti has seen this film before. A campaign loses the trust of the people, loses an election badly, and then its managers find their voice only when someone else begins to do the work.
The statement circulated on 23 October 2026 under the name of Rt. Hon. Gboyega Aribisogan is the latest scene in that tired production. It deserves an answer.
Start with the signature. Hon. Gboyega Aribisogan is not the Publicity Secretary of the ADC in Ekiti State. He resigned that office to contest for the House of Assembly, and Hon. Gbenga Oloninla was duly put in his place.
A man who walked away from an office cannot walk back into it through a WhatsApp forward. The statement is not a party statement. It is a faction’s opinion on a borrowed letterhead.
Then look at the headline. It announces a campaign for “Atiku-Amaeci”. The body then calls him “Amechi”. A group that cannot spell the running mate’s name the same way twice on one page now wants Ekiti to trust it with the party agents who will guard Atiku’s votes on 16 January 2027.
THE CHAIRMAN WHO WAS NEVER ELECTED:
The statement speaks of a State Working Committee “led by Dr. Bamidele Ekunola”. We ask a simple question. Where was he elected?
There was no congress. There was no venue. There was no ballot, no returning officer, no delegates and no result sheet. A handful of stakeholders, about five men, gathered and decided among themselves.
He was never presented to the party at any forum, in any Local Government or in any ward. Ekiti party members woke up to a “chairman” they never saw, never voted for and were never introduced to.
We challenge Mr Ekunola and those behind him to publish the date of the congress that produced him, the venue, the names of the delegates and the officer who returned him. They cannot, because no such exercise took place.
In the absence of a duly elected State Chairman, we have put our full weight behind Hon. Ilesanmi Omolayo, the legacy chairman. And he has not sat idle on that position. He has been promoting Atiku Abubakar across Ekiti and putting up billboards for Atiku.
Now ask them. What has Mr Ekunola done for Atiku? Which billboard has he raised? Which ward has he mobilised? Which meeting has he called for the candidate? Their only visible contribution to this campaign so far is a press release attacking the men doing the work.
THE CANDIDATE WHO HAD EVERYTHING HIS WAY:
Since Prof. Olusola Eleka began to lead the Atiku structure in Ekiti, the same people who ran the governorship campaign have been unable to sleep. Petitions are collated. Signatures are chased. Statements are issued at 3pm on a Friday. Why?
Let us remind Ekiti of the governorship race. From the day Ambassador Dare Bejide emerged as candidate, nobody imposed anything on him. Not one person. Every decision about his campaign was left to him.
He chose his own campaign team without anyone’s interference. He chose his strategy, his coordinators, his spending and his messengers. No committee overruled him. No leader dictated to him.
And the result of that free hand was 3 per cent.
That is not an accident of history. It is the verdict of the Ekiti electorate on how that campaign was run and by whom.
When a man is given every freedom and returns such a result, the honourable response is quiet reflection, not war against those now building what he could not build.
The same hands that steered that campaign are now reaching for the steering wheel of Atiku’s. Ekiti will not hand it to them.
FROM PRESS RELEASE TO POLICE STATION:
Having failed to persuade party members, the group has now reportedly written to the Commissioner of Police, insisting that Prof. Eleka was never confirmed as Coordinator. Pause on that. A faction of our own party has taken a disagreement about who leads a campaign to the Police.
What crime has been committed? Holding stakeholder meetings? Mobilising voters for the ADC candidate? Screening party agents? The Police have serious work to do in Ekiti.
They are not the registrar of campaign councils, and a group that runs to them over a campaign structure has confessed that it cannot win the argument among party members.
WHAT MORE CONFIRMATION DO THEY NEED?:
They keep asking for confirmation. Here it is. Alhaji Kashim Imam, Chairman of the Atiku Presidential Campaign Council, personally called Prof. Olusola Eleka and Chief Hon. Segun Akinwunmi and directed them to commence work immediately, without waiting for any announcement. That is the instruction of the man who chairs the Campaign Council, and it is being obeyed.
And mark who received that call. Chief Hon. Segun Akinwunmi is a strong member of the Bejide group. He took Alhaji Kashim Imam’s call himself, and he informed his own group about it.
So the group is not ignorant of the confirmation. It heard it from one of its own. What they lack is not information. What they lack is the will to accept it.
What was expected of them was simple. Their own man had been honoured with the Deputy Coordinator’s seat. Every member of the Bejide group should have rallied round him and joined the work.
Instead they chose to write to the Police, deny what their own member told them and attack the very coordination in which their own member sits.
“AARE AMERIJOYE’S ANNOUNCEMENT”:
They now say that Prof. Eleka’s leadership is merely “Aare Amerijoye’s announcement”. I accept the compliment, but I cannot take the credit. The call came from Alhaji Kashim Imam, the Matawalli of Borno, one of the most distinguished, most respected and most consummate statesmen this country has produced.
A man of towering integrity, rare wisdom and unmatched political sagacity, he does not speak idly and he does not act carelessly. When a man of his stature and experience makes a call, it is not a rumour to be disputed in a WhatsApp group.
It is a directive to be obeyed. If my name is the worst thing they can find, they have found nothing.
But let them answer this. Was it my announcement that took Prof. Eleka to the head of the Ekiti delegation before His Excellency Atiku Abubakar? Was it my announcement that filled the halls at the stakeholder meetings across the three senatorial districts?
Was it my announcement that opened the ADC secretariat in Ikole? Was it my announcement that brought Local Government chairmen of this party to sign their names publicly behind him? Work cannot be announced into existence. It can only be done, and Prof. Eleka has been doing it while his critics draft letters.
WHY THEY FEAR ELEKA:
Prof. Olusola Eleka is a former Deputy Governor of this state, a scholar and a man whose name opens doors in all 16 Local Governments.
Since September he has met interest groups across Ekiti, from market leaders to artisans, from youth bodies to religious and community leaders. The progress is real, and that is precisely the problem for those who preferred an Ekiti campaign that went nowhere.
Beside him stands Chief Hon. Segun Akinwunmi, one of the great mobilising forces of Ekiti politics and a strong, longstanding member of the Peoples Democratic Movement (PDM), the political family Atiku Abubakar himself led. He is not new to Atiku and Atiku is not new to him.
He has taken this campaign to every class of voter in the state: to the farmer and the trader, the artisan and the civil servant, the student and the pensioner, the elders in the palaces and the youths on the streets.
His belief that Atiku will win this election is total, and that belief will not permit any compromise with anyone who would trade Atiku’s votes for personal gain.
And he is drawing members of his former camp into the work one by one. That is how this coordination builds: the door is open to everyone willing to work.
The statement claims to fear “confusion and disaffection”. The only confusion in Ekiti is coming from those who cannot accept that their own people are moving on without them.
Notice what the statement does not say. It does not say Eleka has failed. It does not fault a single meeting, a single structure or a single result. It hides behind procedure, the last refuge of those who have lost the argument on the ground.
THE QUESTION OF AGENTS:
We agree that party agents are the business of the party. That is precisely why they must come through the party’s lawful executive and the ward structures that actually exist, working with the State Coordinator and his Deputy, not through a committee assembled by five men in a room.
His Excellency Atiku Abubakar takes a keen personal interest in who stands for him at the polling units, and so do we. Our team is completing the collation of agents now, and every name is being screened clinically, one by one, because an agent who cannot be trusted at the polling unit is worse than no agent at all.
We will not allow anyone who is not determined to represent the party, and determined to see Atiku win this election, to wear the badge of a party agent. There will be no horse-trading of Atiku’s votes for Tinubu in Ekiti. Not in one unit. Not in one ward.
A list compiled by an unelected chairmanship, or by any group of people other than the State Coordinator and Deputy State Coordinator, Prof. Olusola Eleka and Chief (Hon.) Segun Akinwunmi, is not a party document.
It is a danger to Atiku’s votes, and the Presidential Campaign Council and the National Headquarters should treat it so.
And let everyone understand this clearly: ADC is not the PDP of old, where agents’ and delegates’ lists were said to change hands for cash at the national secretariat and whoever paid got recognised.
This is the ADC. Such fraud and impunity will not sail through here under His Excellency Senator David Mark, our National Chairman.
A retired General, a former Senate President who presided over the upper chamber for eight unbroken years, and one of the most illustrious, most principled and most formidable statesmen in the history of this Republic, he is a leader of iron discipline, unimpeachable integrity and legendary firmness.
Under his watch, no money will buy a list and no fraud will wear the party’s name.
ENOUGH OF SHADOW CHASING:
Having said all this, let us drop the needless acrimony and hold on to one fact every one of us already knows. Atiku Abubakar is winning this election. Atiku Abubakar is the next President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
When that day comes, the only credential that will count in Ekiti is your polling unit. Not the press release you issued. Not the petition you signed. Not the letter you wrote to the Police. Your polling unit. Win it, and you have earned your place. Lose it, and no intrigue will speak for you.
In 2023, against every obstacle placed in our way, including those placed by the man who then led our party in the state and tried every means to sabotage us, just as some are trying now ahead of 2027, Ekiti delivered 29.06 per cent, almost 30 per cent, for Atiku Abubakar.
For 2027 we have pledged no less than 40 per cent. That pledge will be delivered by people who work, not people who write to the Police.
So stop chasing shadows. Every ounce of energy now spent trying to distract the Eleka and Akinwunmi coordination from its excellent work should be poured into your own ward and your own unit. That is where Atiku’s victory will be decided, and that is where your loyalty will be measured.
And let it be said plainly to anyone whose real interest is to position himself for campaign resources meant for the grassroots and then disappear with them: you have missed the road.
That will never happen in Ekiti. We will not allow one man’s greed to put the future of thousands of party faithful at risk as Atiku Abubakar emerges President of Nigeria.
To party members: disregard the 23 October statement in its entirety. It was not issued by any officer of this party. Stay with your ward and Local Government leaders, and stay with the coordination under Prof. Olusola Eleka and Chief Hon. Segun Akinwunmi.
To our brothers and sisters in the Bejide group: you had your turn. You had a free hand. You had no interference. Ekiti gave its answer in June. Your own man now sits in the coordination; rally round him.
The door is open and your place in this work is waiting, but the work of electing Atiku Abubakar will not wait for anyone, and no press release, no petition and no police letter will stop it.
Go home, mobilise your people and win your polling unit. That is the only contest that matters now.
We are not distracted. We are working.
Aare Amerijoye DOT.
Secretary, Ekiti State ADC Strategic Committee
25 October 2026
Cc:
His Excellency, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, GCON, Wazirin Adamawa
Former Vice President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and ADC Presidential Candidate
His Excellency, Senator (Gen.) David Alechenu Bonaventure Mark, GCON
Former President of the Senate and National Chairman, African Democratic Congress (ADC)
Alhaji Kashim Imam, Matawalli of Borno,
Chairman, Atiku-Amaechi Presidential Campaign Council
Hon. Ilesanmi Omolayo
State Chairman, African Democratic Congress (ADC), Ekiti State
His Excellency, Prof. Olusola Eleka
Former Deputy Governor of Ekiti State and State Coordinator, Atiku-Amaechi Presidential Campaign, Ekiti State
Chief (Hon.) Segun Akinwunmi
Deputy State Coordinator, Atiku-Amaechi Presidential Campaign, Ekiti State
