EKITI: THE SEASON OF LIES AND HALF-TRUTHS.

EKITI: THE SEASON OF LIES AND HALF-TRUTHS.

By Segun Dipe.

(Here is a remixed, updated, version) 

Campaign season is back in Ekiti. And with it comes the usual fog.  

Promises will fly. Counter-promises will land. In between, half-truths will multiply faster than facts. This is the season when some aspirants believe the road to the Government House runs through the gutter.  

Expect the old playbook. One man will announce himself as his party’s “anointed” before the party itself speaks. Another will rehearse falsehoods about rivals until repetition feels like evidence. The names of sitting leaders, especially the governor, will be dipped in mud and hung out to dry — all for a sliver of advantage.

The usual characters will return on schedule. They’ll commission projects they never touched, parade degrees they never earned, and claim street credibility they never built. Online, rented crowds will cheer on cue. Bought followers will swear they saw miracles. In that noise, truth becomes the first casualty.

This is why vigilance is not optional. Don’t swallow every flyer. Don’t retweet every clip. Ask the question: Where is the proof?_ Check the record. Match the mouth with the mandate. Be suspicious of anyone whose strategy is to split Ekiti into camps and then claim to lead it. Division is the cheapest campaign tool, and the most expensive to repair.

Ekiti has paid for lies before. We paid with abandoned projects. We paid with four-year regressions. We paid with governors who campaigned in poetry and governed in prose. We cannot afford that tax again.

So let’s name things. Call out the lie. Reject the manufactured narrative. Demand the receipt. Our state does not need peddlers of false hope. It needs carriers of real weight.

And what is real the weight?

1. Integrity that can be audited: If you can’t show how you lived yesterday, you can’t be trusted with our tomorrow.  

2. A record that can be touched: Not “I will build,” but “I have built.” Not “I will pay,” but “I paid.”  

3. Fairness without a calculator: Leaders who see different communities with the same eye, who don’t govern by senatorial payback.  

4. Unity as method, not slogan: Anyone can preach peace. Look for the one who kept a fractured party, and a fractious state, from cracking.  

5. A vision with a price tag: “Ekiti will be great” is not a plan. “130MW, township roads in all 16 LGAs, 5,000 more youths in Agric by 2027” is a plan.

This season, let’s retire empty noise. Let’s audit, not applaud. Let’s choose builders over blowhards, doers over dubbers.  

Ekiti deserves leaders who move us forward, not those who hold us hostage to the past or sell us fiction about the future.

Truth is the only thing that sets a state free. But first, we must chase it, catch it, and refuse to let it go.

Dipe writes from Ado-Ekiti.