{"id":66297,"date":"2025-05-22T09:47:11","date_gmt":"2025-05-22T09:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=66297"},"modified":"2025-05-23T04:05:59","modified_gmt":"2025-05-23T04:05:59","slug":"obafemi-vows-free-education-and-security-reform-in-ekiti","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/05\/22\/obafemi-vows-free-education-and-security-reform-in-ekiti\/","title":{"rendered":"Obafemi Vows Free Education, Security Reform in Ekiti"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Huldah Shado<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Dr Olugbenga Obafemi, a leading contender for the 2026 Ekiti gubernatorial election under the Peoples Democratic Party, has pledged a radical transformation of governance in the state, with free education and security overhaul topping his agenda.<\/p>\n<p>Addressing supporters and journalists during his declaration visit to Ikole-Ekiti, his hometown, Dr Obafemi decried the decline in education standards in the state, pointing to Ekiti&#8217;s slip to eighth place in WAEC rankings as a wake-up call.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIf elected, I will provide free education from primary to university level. The resources are here &#8211; cocoa, gold, coconut, cassava. Ekiti is rich, yet our people suffer,\u201d he stated passionately.<\/p>\n<p>Beyond education, Dr Obafemi outlined a robust plan to revamp infrastructure, citing the underutilized airport project and poor road networks.<\/p>\n<p>He insisted that the airport must be fully opened to commercial flights to drive investment and development.<\/p>\n<p>He further promised to strengthen the state&#8217;s security through a proactive and rural-based Amotekun corps.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cMy own Amotekun will not be in towns. They will be stationed in forests, securing our borders and flushing out criminals,\u201d he declared.<\/p>\n<p>Obafemi also took a swipe at the ruling APC, accusing it of failing to maximize the state\u2019s resources or deliver meaningful development. He pledged to transform agriculture, making Ekiti a food basket for Nigeria.<\/p>\n<p>On the PDP race, he acknowledged fellow aspirant Emmanuel Fayose\u2019s right to contest but expressed confidence in winning the primary.<\/p>\n<p>The Elekole of Ikole Ekiti, Oba Aderemi Fasiku, received Dr Obafemi warmly at his palace. The monarch expressed delight at the aspiration of a son of the soil and prayed for his success, urging him not to forget his roots if elected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Huldah Shado Dr Olugbenga Obafemi, a leading contender for the 2026 Ekiti gubernatorial election under the Peoples Democratic Party, has pledged a radical transformation of governance in the state, with free education and security overhaul topping his agenda. Addressing supporters and journalists during his declaration visit to Ikole-Ekiti, his hometown, Dr Obafemi decried the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":29,"featured_media":66298,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-66297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/29"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66297"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":66369,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66297\/revisions\/66369"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66298"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}