Between ‘Ekitigate and Protest Votes: Ekiti State 2014 Governorship Election Revisited

Abstract

The question of the credibility of the 2014 Ekiti state governorship election in Nigeria is still a subject of ongoing controversy despite the report of both local and international observers which declared the election free and fair. Temitope Aluko, the former secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), the party that won the election had revealed how the party used the military to rig the governorship election in favour of the PDP. He provided evidence on how the PDP governorship candidate, Ayodele Fayose lobbied two government ministers; the Minister of State for Defense Musiliu Obanikoro and the Minister of Police Affairs Jelili Adesiyan--to convince the former President Goodluck Jonathan to support their rigging plot which became known as Ekitigate. A Nigerian army captain had earlier leaked an audio tape about the alleged election rigging. The secret recording, allegedly contained a discussion the Nigerian ministers had with an army General to rig the Ekiti election.This paper revisits the Ekiti governorship election to decipher whether the alleged rigging had altered the outcome of the election in which the incumbent governor lost or whether the outcome would still have been the same without the rigging. This paper is significant because it will clear the air on the impact of the alleged rigging on the outcome of that election. The paper adopts content analysis of scanty extant literatures on the subject, media reports as well as field interviews of major actors.

Keywords: Ekiti, Ekitigate, Fayose, Fayemi, Governorship election, Democracy