Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
The candidates of the African Democratic Congress for Ekiti North have drawn a line, and the line reads victory. Prince (Dr) Funso Ayeni, the party’s senatorial candidate for Ekiti North, a brother and a fellow son of my own Ikole Local Government, and Sir Stevens Oribamise, its candidate for the House of Representatives in Ekiti North Federal Constituency 1 and a son of Oye Local Government, summoned the leaders of the district to a single, sober task. Close ranks. Take the mobilisation of the people into the party with the seriousness it demands. Galvanise every class of voter behind one common purpose.
I was a participant in the meeting. The appeal it produced was made at a stakeholders’ gathering of the senatorial district convened at 10 a.m., an engagement that came on the back of a series of meetings already held across Ekiti North. It was not the opening of the conversation but its consolidation. The groundwork had been laid in gathering after gathering, and the task now is to bind those separate efforts into one disciplined march.
Their message to the leaders of Ekiti North was neither ambiguous nor ceremonial. Unity of purpose, they insisted, is no longer a slogan to be recited at rallies but a discipline to be practised in the wards. The work of bringing men and women into the party, of registering them, of moving them, of persuading them, must begin now, and it must belong to everyone.
A TWO-FOLD MANDATE
The two candidates have tied their own fortunes to a larger banner. It was not enough, they argued, to win the senate and the House of Representatives for Ekiti North. The district must also become the ground from which Atiku Abubakar draws his highest harvest of votes in the whole of Ekiti State.
That ambition places Ekiti North at the centre of the state’s effort, and it does so deliberately. The candidates have accepted that the strength of their own tickets and the strength of the presidential ticket are not separate contests running in parallel lanes. They are one machine. Every vote mobilised for Ayeni and Oribamise is a vote within reach for Atiku, and every voter drawn home for Atiku is a voter within reach for the district’s own sons.
Ekiti North will not merely participate in Atiku’s victory. It intends to lead it.
THE ARITHMETIC OF INTENT
The pledge has a foundation in fact. In the 2023 presidential election, Atiku, then a presidential candidate, polled 33,326 votes in Ekiti North, the highest tally he drew from any of Ekiti’s three senatorial districts. That figure, creditable as it was, is now treated by Ayeni and Oribamise not as a ceiling but as a floor.
Ekiti North, they have pledged, will this time deliver to Atiku nothing less than 60,000 votes. The gap between the two figures is not a matter of hope. It is a matter of work, of the silent voter awakened, of the absent son brought home, of the registered card converted at last into a ballot cast and protected.
THE ENGINE ROOM OF EKITI
There is a plain logic to placing Ekiti North at the head of the column. A district that sets the pace sets the standard, and a harvest of that size, recorded early and defended fully, tells the rest of the state what is possible and what is expected.
Ayeni and Oribamise therefore asked the leaders of the district to see their two campaigns and the presidential campaign as a single covenant. The senate seat, the House of Representatives seat, and the presidential ballot rise together or they do not rise at all.
A HAND EXTENDED TO THE NINE
That covenant now reaches beyond the two tickets. Ayeni and Oribamise invited the nine House of Assembly candidates of the African Democratic Congress across the senatorial district to merge their energies and their efforts with the wider campaign, and to do so seamlessly, as one synergistic front rather than nine separate struggles.
The reasoning is both strategic and generous. The presidential and National Assembly elections of 16 January 2027 will not close the contest for Ekiti North. They will set its tone. A commanding result on that day, the candidates argued, will carry its momentum directly into the House of Assembly elections of 6 February 2027, lifting every ADC candidate who stood shoulder to shoulder in the first battle. Victory on the sixteenth is the surest foundation for victory on the sixth.
OPERATION WIN YOUR POLLING UNITS
Beyond the leaders and the candidates, the campaign has placed a single personal charge in the hands of every stakeholder, and it carries a name. Operation Win Your Polling Units.
The instruction is simple and it admits of no exception. Every stakeholder, every leader, every mobiliser and every agent is asked to take ownership of the polling unit where he or she votes, to know its register, to bring out its voters, to guard its result, and to deliver it. A target of 60,000 is not won at a rally. It is won one polling unit at a time, by the men and women who each answer for their own.
Win your polling unit, and Ekiti North wins the day.
ELEKA GRACES IKOLE, THE ROAD TURNS TO MOBA
The day carried a mark of its own. Professor Olusola Eleka, former Deputy Governor of Ekiti State, graced the commissioning of the new ADC secretariat in Ikole Local Government, having first offered a brief address at the Ekiti North senatorial meeting. He was accompanied by Hon. Remi Ikumapayi and Hon. Olaiya Tunde Dickson, both of the Ekiti South senatorial district, whose presence carried a quiet but unmistakable message. The determination to deliver for Atiku is not the errand of one senatorial district alone. It is a solidarity that reaches across Ekiti’s senatorial lines.
The proceedings also settled the next port of call. The Ekiti North meeting will next hold in Moba Local Government, carrying the same charge of unity and mobilisation into another quarter of the district. The march does not pause. It moves.
The call has gone out, and the leaders of Ekiti North have heard it. What remains now is the work, ward by ward and unit by unit, until 60,000 is no longer a pledge but a result.
EkitiNorthForAtiku #Atiku2027 #ADC
Aare Amerijoye DOT.B
Director General, The Narrative Force
thenarrativeforce.org
15 August 2026
