INEC Declares APC’s Biodun Oyebanji Winner of 2026 Ekiti Governorship Election

Governor Biodun Oyebanji has secured a second term as governor of Ekiti State after the Independent National Electoral Commission declared him winner of the 2026 governorship election in the early hours of Sunday, June 21. The declaration makes him the first governor in the state’s history to win consecutive terms since Ekiti returned to democratic governance in 1999, ending a run of one-term administrations that had defined the state’s political pattern for more than two decades.

INEC’s returning officer confirmed a wide margin of victory across all sixteen local government areas

The Chief Returning Officer for the election, Professor Adenike Oladiji, Vice Chancellor of the Federal University of Technology, Akure, announced the final result at the state collation centre in Ado-Ekiti at about 3:13 a.m. on Sunday. She declared that the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Biodun Oyebanji, polled 319,224 votes to defeat thirteen other contenders, including his two closest rivals.

Wole Oluyede of the Peoples Democratic Party finished second with 40,543 votes, while Dare Bejide of the African Democratic Congress placed third with 12,872 votes. The remaining twelve parties on the ballot shared just over 3,100 votes between them, a spread that underscores how concentrated the contest was around the top three candidates despite the crowded field.

Oladiji also disclosed the broader turnout figures for the exercise. According to her breakdown, 988,251 voters were registered for the election, of whom 384,940 were accredited on election day. Total votes cast stood at 382,109, with 375,777 of those judged valid and 6,332 rejected for failing to meet ballot requirements. Voting opened at 8:31 a.m. on Saturday, June 20, and closed officially at 2:30 p.m., though collation continued well into Sunday morning across the state’s sixteen local government areas.

The governor’s strongest numbers came from his home base and the state’s most populous council areas

Oyebanji’s victory was not confined to any single bloc of the state. He won decisively in Ado-Ekiti, the state capital and its largest local government area, and posted similarly commanding figures in Irepodun/Ifelodun, Ekiti West, Ikole and Ijero. In Irepodun/Ifelodun alone, the APC candidate polled 29,278 votes against the PDP’s 2,119 and the ADC’s 511, a margin that mirrored the pattern recorded across most of the state.

Perhaps the most telling result came from Efon local government, the home turf of PDP candidate Wole Oluyede. Even there, Oyebanji’s APC carried the area with 8,742 votes against the PDP’s 2,051, a result that suggests the governor’s reach extended into territory his opponents might ordinarily have expected to defend. The only local government area where the contest narrowed meaningfully was Ikere, where APC’s 11,116 votes were trailed closely by the PDP’s 9,892, the tightest margin recorded anywhere in the state.

In Ekiti West, the governor’s own local government area, INEC recorded 26,359 votes for the APC against 2,795 for the PDP and 1,730 for the ADC, figures that gave Oyebanji a comfortable home advantage to add to his statewide tally.

Election observers described the process as largely peaceful while flagging procedural concerns

INEC’s Resident Electoral Commissioner in Ekiti, Bunmi Omoseyindemi, commended security agencies and voters for what he described as a peaceful exercise, a characterisation that several monitoring groups echoed in their preliminary assessments. Observers from the European Union-SDGN Election Observation Hub praised the performance of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System used to verify voters at polling units across the state.

Not every assessment was uniformly positive. Yiaga Africa, one of the country’s leading election observation bodies, raised concerns about inconsistencies in the electoral materials deployed for the exercise. In a statement signed by the organisation’s Executive Director, Samson Itodo, and the chair of its Ekiti observation mission, Aisha Abdullahi, the group noted that court rulings affecting the PDP’s candidacy and late administrative changes had altered the list of participating parties after INEC’s initial publication in January 2026, a development it warned could create confusion among presiding officers compiling result sheets.

Separately, the candidate of the African Democratic Congress, Dare Bejide, alleged irregularities during the voting process and reported that his driver was assaulted at a polling unit, an incident he said had been reported to the police.

Governor Oyebanji, for his part, rejected allegations of voter harassment, intimidation and vote-buying raised during the election. Speaking to journalists after casting his ballot at Polling Unit 003 in Okelele, Ikogosi-Ekiti, in Ekiti West local government area, he said anyone making such claims should be prepared to substantiate them with evidence, and he described the overall conduct of the exercise as satisfactory.

The governor frames his re-election as a mandate to deepen the state’s existing development agenda

In his acceptance speech, Oyebanji characterised the scale of his victory as proof of what he called an absolute consensus among Ekiti voters. He thanked residents who turned out to vote for what he described as continuity and stability, language that echoed the central pitch of his re-election campaign.

The governor pointed to the breadth of his support as validation of his first term in office. He told supporters that by delivering wins across all sixteen local government areas and securing roughly 85 percent of the popular vote, the electorate had built what he called an unbreakable wall of unity behind his administration.

Looking ahead to his second term, Oyebanji said his government would continue to implement what it calls a shared prosperity agenda, with policies built around six pillars his party has framed as the foundation of its development programme for the state. He specifically committed to continued efforts against poverty and inequality, positioning his economic record from the first term, particularly in infrastructure and education, as the basis for voter confidence in a second.

President Tinubu’s congratulatory message pointed to infrastructure and education as evidence of performance

President Bola Ahmed Tinubu congratulated Oyebanji on his victory, describing the result as an attestation to the governor’s record on infrastructure and education during his first term. The President also commended security agencies for their role in what he characterised as a largely hitch-free election.

Tinubu used the occasion to call on INEC to strengthen its electoral processes ahead of Nigeria’s next general election cycle, a remark that aligns with broader scrutiny of state-level elections held outside the general election calendar, including questions raised by observer groups like Yiaga Africa over candidate list changes and result sheet accuracy.

Ekiti’s history of one-term governors makes this result politically significant beyond the numbers

The scale of Oyebanji’s win matters less, in some respects, than what it represents historically. Since Ekiti held its first governorship election after the return to civilian rule in 1999, no sitting governor had managed to secure a second consecutive term, a pattern that had made the state something of an outlier among its south-west neighbours. Oyebanji’s victory breaks that cycle, and political observers in the state are likely to read it as a signal that incumbency, when paired with visible infrastructure delivery, can finally overcome the anti-incumbency sentiment that has shaped Ekiti politics for a generation.