In a political drama that has quickly become the talk of Ado-Ekiti’s beer parlours and WhatsApp groups alike, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has managed to do what the opposition could not: turn its own campaign into a full-blown audit committee. Weeks after the June 20 governorship election came and went, party leaders in Ado-Ekiti Local Government Area are now locked in a very public tug-of-war over money, motorcycles, and — perhaps most memorably — fifteen bags of rice. At the centre of it all sits a demand for accountability that Dr Wole Oluyede, the PDP’s gubernatorial candidate, and his running mate, Deji Ogunsakin, seem in no hurry to fully satisfy, at least not with the receipts everyone claims to want.
Missing Agents, Missing Millions: Is the Ekiti PDP Hiding Something?
According to a statement from the Ado-Ekiti PDP executive, led by chairman Femi Odeyemi and secretary Makanjuola Temitope, the party released a small fortune for the campaign — N6 million for the local government rally from Oluyede, N3 million from Ogunsakin himself, N500,000 from Monica Fajuyi, and the aforementioned rice from Mrs Lanre Fajuyi. It is, by Nigerian political standards, an almost suspiciously transparent breakdown — right down to the exact number of rice bags — which makes the demand for further accountability from the opposing camp all the more theatrical.
Yet the numbers only tell half the story. Hon. Sunshine Anifowose, speaking for the Ado-Ekiti PDP Stakeholders, isn’t interested in press releases; he wants transaction alerts. He has openly questioned why, if agents were funded, roughly eight in ten polling units reportedly had no PDP representation on election day. It is the kind of arithmetic that turns a campaign finance dispute into a genuine whodunit: the money left the account, but where, exactly, did it land?
Fifteen Bags of Rice and the Politics of Small Change
There is something almost poetic about the fact that in a dispute involving millions of naira, the detail everyone keeps circling back to is rice. Fifteen bags, to be precise, courtesy of Mrs Lanre Fajuyi — a contribution so specific it reads less like a donation and more like an exhibit in a courtroom. It is a reminder that in Nigerian grassroots politics, food security and political loyalty have always shared the same pot, quite literally.
But behind the humour lies a serious accountability gap that party members insist must be closed before the PDP can present a united front for whatever comes next. Ogunsakin’s camp insists he personally bankrolled significant campaign operations out of goodwill, despite reservations some stalwarts once held about his running mate slot. Anifowose’s camp insists goodwill is not a defence — only documents are. Until one side produces bank alerts rather than statements, the rice will keep doing more talking than the receipts.
Every internal party crisis in Nigeria eventually becomes a referendum on trust, and Ado-Ekiti’s PDP chapter is no exception. What began as a call for accountability over campaign funds has, in classic Nigerian political fashion, exposed deeper fault lines between the party’s grassroots and its leadership — fault lines that no amount of rice, cash, or carefully worded statements can quietly paper over. OGM News NG will continue monitoring this story as both camps are expected to respond further in the coming days.
Table of Contents
Discover more from OGM News NG
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
