Ekiti at 30: The Leadership Questions We Must Ask - By Sola Ogunlola
ABUJA — Thirty years after its creation, Ekiti State deserves a celebration. But it also deserves something more difficult: an honest audit of its leadership.
Thirty years is too long for a state to still be explaining why yesterday's projects remain today's unfinished business.
The creation of Ekiti State on October 1, 1996, was the product of a determined struggle for political autonomy, better representation, development and a stronger voice for the people. Those who fought for the state did not fight merely for a new administrative boundary. They believed that an Ekiti government would be closer to its people and better positioned to transform their lives.
Three decades later, we must ask a simple question:
What have successive political leaders done with that opportunity?
The answer cannot be found in anniversary speeches alone.
One of the most embarrassing failures of leadership in Ekiti has been the persistent problem of abandoned and inherited projects. This is not speculation. Successive administrations themselves have acknowledged the problem.
In 2019, the Fayemi administration announced that it was taking over 37 community projects abandoned by the previous administration. The projects included electricity extensions, boreholes, classrooms, market stalls, drainage and other community infrastructure.
In another example, the same administration announced the revival of secretariat buildings that had reportedly been abandoned for 12 years. It also identified several roads and other projects left incomplete by previous governments.
The problem is bigger than any individual governor.
It exposes a culture in which government projects are too often treated as the property of the administration that initiated them rather than as public investments belonging to Ekiti people.
That is a leadership failure.
It is also why the state's recent emphasis on continuity is important. Governor Biodun Oyebanji has acknowledged that his administration inherited projects from Segun Oni, Ayo Fayose and Kayode Fayemi and has made completion of some of them a central part of his administration's approach.
But here is the uncomfortable question: Why should it take decades to complete projects that successive governments have already identified as necessary?
Why should a road, school, hospital or public building survive several administrations before finally reaching completion?
Why should taxpayers repeatedly finance mobilisation, redesigns, variations and recommencement of projects that ought to have been completed in the first place?
This is where political leadership must accept responsibility.
The failure to build beyond political cycles
Ekiti's leadership problem has never been simply a shortage of ideas. The state has produced educated politicians, civil servants, technocrats and intellectuals capable of articulating ambitious development plans.
The problem has too often been execution, continuity and institutionalisation.
A government comes with an agenda. Another arrives and starts its own. Projects are renamed, redesigned, suspended or abandoned. New initiatives are announced while old commitments remain unfinished.
Even former Governor Kayode Fayemi, while defending his own record, acknowledged the scale of the problem. In 2018, he said his administration had completed projects inherited from the Segun Oni government and criticised the practice of abandoning projects because they were associated with previous administrations.
That admission should concern every Ekiti citizen.
If public projects can be abandoned simply because political power has changed hands, then the state is not suffering merely from inadequate resources. It is suffering from a failure of political culture.
Where is the economic transformation?
The second leadership failure is the inability, over 30 years, to build an economy sufficiently strong to reduce Ekiti's dependence on government.
Ekiti cannot remain a state where government is simultaneously the largest employer, major spender, principal project financier and primary source of economic opportunity.
A state cannot build a sustainable future simply by constructing roads and government buildings.
The harder questions are about production.
Where are the industries?
Where are the large-scale agro-processing investments?
Where are the technology companies?
Where are the jobs capable of keeping Ekiti's brightest young people at home?
Where is the deliberate economic strategy that turns the state's educational advantage into an engine of innovation, enterprise and wealth creation?
These questions matter because infrastructure without productive economic activity can become little more than expensive concrete.
The state's own 2024 Citizens Accountability Report shows a striking difference in sectoral execution. Infrastructure recorded 97 percent capital expenditure performance, while agriculture recorded 90 percent, education 83 percent and health 77 percent. But water was at 49 percent, women, youth and sports at 28 percent, and law and justice at just 4 percent.
Those figures do not mean that nothing was done. They do, however, raise questions about priorities, implementation capacity and whether budgetary promises are consistently translating into outcomes.
Leadership must be measured beyond projects
There is also a tendency in Nigerian politics to equate the number of commissioned projects with development.
That is a dangerous shortcut.
A government may build hundreds of kilometres of roads and still fail to create a productive economy. It may renovate hospitals without solving the deeper problem of healthcare delivery. It may build schools without addressing learning outcomes. It may announce empowerment programmes without creating sustainable enterprises.
Development is not the ceremony at which a project is commissioned.
Development is what happens to people's lives after the cameras leave.
That is the standard to which Ekiti's leadership should be held.
The water, power and basic infrastructure question
Even today, the state's own announcements reveal how much basic infrastructure remains unfinished.
In 2025, the state government approved more than N157 million to overhaul electrical infrastructure around Oye-Ekiti, citing undersized distribution networks, faulty transformers and frequent power failures.
The government has also had to invest through the SURWASH programme in improving water, sanitation and hygiene infrastructure across schools and health centres.
Again, these interventions are welcome. But at 30, they should also force us to ask why basic infrastructure remains such a persistent development challenge.
We cannot blame FG for everything
Ekiti's leaders often have legitimate reasons to complain about limited resources and the constraints imposed by federalism.
But FG cannot be the explanation for every failure.
State leadership still controls priorities, procurement, implementation, local economic policy, education policy, healthcare administration and a significant portion of the state's development strategy.
Indeed, Governor Oyebanji himself acknowledged in June 2026 that his administration struggled with the wage bill and capital projects during its first six months before increased federal resources eased the pressure.
That statement is important because it demonstrates both sides of the argument: states operate under serious fiscal constraints, but leadership choices still matter.
At 30, the excuses must end
Ekiti's leaders should not be judged by how eloquently they celebrate the state's past.
They should be judged by what they leave behind.
At 30, Ekiti needs a political leadership culture that treats public money as public trust; that finishes projects before announcing new ones; that measures development by outcomes rather than ceremonies; that creates an economy beyond government payroll; and that builds institutions strong enough to survive individual governors.
The state also needs leaders who can think beyond four-year political calculations.
The most consequential project in Ekiti should not be the next road, bridge or government building.
It should be the creation of a state whose economy can stand on its own feet.
The heroes of the Ekiti struggle did not fight for a state that would merely have governors, commissioners and ministries. They fought for a state where its people would have a stronger voice, greater opportunity and a better future.
Thirty years later, that promise remains unfinished.
So, yes, let Ekiti celebrate.
But let the celebration also become an audit.
Let us ask every administration, past and present:
What did you inherit? What did you promise? What did you deliver? What did you abandon? How much did it cost? And what measurable difference did it make to the ordinary Ekiti citizen?
Those are the questions that matter at 30.
Because the true anniversary of Ekiti State will not be measured by the number of banners on the streets or speeches from political leaders.
It will be measured by whether the people can honestly say that the state their fathers fought to create has become the state their children deserve.
Happy 30th Anniversary, Ekiti State.
Celebrate the past. Audit the present. And demand more from the future.
Comrd. Sola Ogunlola,
National Coordinator,
Concerned Egbeoba Kingdom Indigenes
Ikole Local Government Area of Ekiti State.