By Segun Dipe
Thirty years after the map of Nigeria was redrawn to give identity to a people, Ekiti stands tall.
On October 1, 1996, General Sani Abacha announced the creation of six new states. For the Ekiti people who are homogeneous, industrious, and famously bookish, it was more than administrative convenience. It was justice. From Ikere to Oye, Ise to Efon, Aramoko to Omuo and back to Ado at the centre, the hills echoed with one song: A ti ri’hun ka iwa o, Ekitikete.
But that state did not fall from heaven. It was fought for. The agitation started in the Second Republic, when Ekiti leaders under old Ondo State demanded their own state but were blocked by partisan politics. By 1991, after Osun was carved out of old Oyo, the demand became deafening. To give it structure, Ekiti elders, traditional rulers, professionals, and technocrats formed the Committee for the Creation of Ekiti State. It was chaired by the iconic economist and retired Federal Permanent Secretary, Chief Oladeji Fasuan, MON, Asiwaju of Afao-Ekiti. With him were Chief Deji Falegan, Chief Afe Babalola who brilliantly presented our memorandum before the Arthur Mbanefo Panel in January 1996, Chief J.E. Babatola, Prof. C. O. Filani, and dozens of frontline Obas and patriots. For five years, they travelled to Abuja thirteen times, lobbying the Sultan, the Emirs, Dr. Olusola Saraki and every member of the Provisional Ruling Council with twenty-four position papers. And in that historic committee, the youngest member and Secretary was a 26-year-old Political Science graduate, Biodun Abayomi Oyebanji. At 26, he was the one taking the minutes, drafting the letters, arranging the visits, and sitting at the feet of Chief Fasuan to learn what Ekiti really wanted. Providence was preparing a future governor in that room.
Thirty years on, was it worth it? The answer is an emphatic yes. What we gained first was identity. Before 1996, Ekiti was a zone in old Ondo State. Today, Ekiti is a brand. That identity was first given a roof by Colonel Inua Bawa, the first Military Administrator, who took Ekiti from zero and chose Ado as capital, and Navy Captain Atanda Yusuf who stabilized the administration and started the first township roads and quarters that made Ado look like a capital.
Our democratic journey became a relay. Otunba Niyi Adebayo, the foundational civilian governor from 1999 to 2003, gave us values, computerisation of schools and prudence. Mr. Ayodele Fayose brought populism and visibility, with township roads, the Fajuyi flyover, the Oja Oba market and stomach infrastructure that made government felt in households. Brigadier General Tunji Olurin as Sole Administrator held the state together in 2006 and prevented collapse. Engineer Segun Oni brought technocratic calm, rural roads, school renovations and due process in contracting. Dr. Kayode Fayemi was the intellectual architect, with free education, free laptops for students and teachers, Social Security for the elderly, the Knowledge Zone concept, the Freedom of Information Act, the ultra-modern Secretariat named after Adebayo, the Civic Centre, the Ikogosi revival and the Cargo Airport project that opened Ekiti to the world.
Every governor contributed to our most consistent covenant, which of course is education. From few schools inherited at creation, we now have a revitalised system. The Oyebanji administration has renovated over one thousand classrooms, built model schools, recruited over one thousand eight hundred teachers and paid over ₦3.5bn naira in UBEC counterpart funding left outstanding for years. We remain second most literate in the Southwest and have the least out-of-school children.
And we have become a true University State. Ekiti today proudly hosts Federal University Oye-Ekiti which is now ranked among the top eleven in Nigeria, and the newly approved Federal University of Technology and Environmental Studies, Iyin-Ekiti. Our state universities are Ekiti State University, Ado-Ekiti founded in 1982, and Bamidele Olumilua University of Education, Science and Technology, Ikere-Ekiti upgraded in 2020. Our private universities are Afe Babalola University, Ado-Ekiti, Nigeria’s best private university with its world-class Teaching Hospital built by an Ekiti son, Venite University, Iloro-Ekiti, and Hillside University of Science and Technology, Okemesi-Ekiti. Ekiti does not just go to school; Ekiti is school.
Scholarship has equally been extended to technical education. Ekiti now has the Federal Polytechnic, Ado-Ekiti established in 1977 with over fifteen thousand students as our oldest technical institution, Ekiti State Polytechnic, Isan-Ekiti formerly College of Agriculture and Technology and converted in 2021, and private polytechnics including Crown Polytechnic, Odo, Ado-Ekiti, Ajayi Polytechnic, Ikere-Ekiti, Ekiti City Polytechnic, Omuo-Oke, and the newly accredited Montgomery Polytechnic, Ikere-Ekiti, alongside Colleges of Education in Ikere and other monotechnics.
We have also won laurels that justify our creation. Ekiti emerged as the World Bank’s Best Performing State under the National Urban Water Sector Reform Project and third best under the Community and Social Development Project in 2019, Best Performing State in Disease Surveillance by the NCDC, and Best Performing State on Domestication of Women Rights Instruments under the VAPP Act by the Federal Ministry of Women Affairs. In fiscal transparency, Ekiti scored one hundred percent and was ranked number one in Nigeria in the BudgIT States Fiscal Transparency League in the second and third quarters of 2024 and first and second quarters of 2025, the only state with such sustained record. The Paradigm Leadership Support Initiative in its Subnational Audit Efficacy Index 2025 ranked Ekiti number one with seventy-two percent, ahead of thirty-five states. Ekiti was also named Most Active Tourism State and its governor Best Tourism Governor at the Akwaaba African Travel Market 2025, and has consistently remained in the Top Ten in the Governance Accountability and Transparency Index in 2025 with eighty-nine point six percent.
And then came Governor Biodun Abayomi Oyebanji, BAO, from 2022 to date. BAO is history fulfilled. The 26-year-old Secretary of the creation committee, former lecturer, Special Assistant and Chief of Staff to Adebayo at 32, Commissioner and Head of the Office of Transformation Strategy and Delivery under Fayemi, and Secretary to the State Government from 2018 to 2021, has come full circle to lead the state he helped create. He is the first governor in Ekiti’s democratic history to win a second term back-to-back, breaking the one-term jinx experienced by Adebayo, Fayose, Oni and Fayemi.
BAO’s philosophy is continuity. Where he met unfinished projects, BAO completed them. He added his own: over three hundred and fifty kilometres of roads from Ikere-Igbara-Odo to Ijan-Ise, five general hospitals fully revamped in Ifaki, Okemesi and Ijero, rural electrification connecting over thirty communities that had never seen public light, implementation of the seventy thousand naira minimum wage, clearance of pension and gratuity arrears that kept our fathers waiting for years, five thousand hectares cleared for agriculture, Ilu Eye aggregation and Ounje Ekiti stores making Ekiti feed itself again, and an Investment Promotion Agency making us an ease-of-doing-business state. Most importantly, he has brought peace.
To be honest at 30 is to be mature, so we must also admit what we have lost. We lost nearly a decade to the politics of excess. The 2006 impeachment and the endless court battles from 2007 to 2010 cost us focus. We gained a state but lost continuity. We lost many of our best to exodus. We educated Nigeria but did not keep our children. Our doctors are in the United Kingdom, professors in America, youths in Lagos. The Fountain still flows outward. We also lost time in turning potential into prosperity. Ikogosi should be our Obudu. Cocoa and cassava should be our oil. We built schools but not enough factories around them.
If the first thirty years were about proving that Ekiti could exist, the next thirty must be about proving that Ekiti can lead. From Fasuan who fought for our existence, to the young Oyebanji who carried the files, to Bawa who gave us a capital, to Adebayo who gave us values, to Fayose who gave us visibility, to Oni who gave us calm, to Fayemi who gave us vision, to BAO who has now given us stability and continuity, the relay has been worth it. Happy birthday, Land of Honour. You have been worth every agitation that birthed you.
Segun Dipe writes on politics and governance.