The Creative Think Tank Group Nigeria, Aliyu makama Road, Kaduna (2026)

20/08/2026

IReV worked in Osun. It Must Work Everywhere in 2027. No Excuses.

Samson Itodo asks the right question: is IReV reclaiming its title as Nigeria's electoral game changer? The answer, after Osun 2026, is "partially." And partially it is not good enough for 2027.

In Osun, INEC uploaded results from 3,664 of 3,763 polling units to the IReV portal in real time. That is 97.4 percent, a significant improvement over the catastrophic failures of 2023, when the portal that was supposed to end result manipulation at collation centers became, instead, a symbol of broken promises and shattered public trust.

97.4 percent is progress. It is not completion. The 99 polling units whose results were not uploaded are 99 opportunities for the kind of manipulation that IReV was specifically designed to prevent. In a governorship election with a clear margin, those gaps did not change the outcome. In a presidential election decided by tens of thousands of votes across a country of 200 million people, those gaps could change everything.

The 2023 general election produced one of the deepest collapses of public trust in INEC's recent history, not because the results were necessarily wrong, but because the IReV system that was supposed to make them verifiable failed so publicly and so completely that every result became contested, regardless of its actual accuracy.

That failure did not happen because the technology did not exist. It happened because the will to deploy it consistently, at scale, under pressure, against the interests of those who prefer opacity, was insufficient. Osun suggests that Will may be returning. 2027 will determine whether it was real or situational.

Our position is simple and non-negotiable. IReV must function in every polling unit in Nigeria during the 2027 general elections.
Not 97 percent. Not 98 percent. Every one. Every result must be uploaded at the polling unit level, immediately after counting, before it travels to any collation center where it can be altered.

Every Nigerian must be able to verify, on their phone, what was counted in their polling unit before the result is announced, not after it is disputed in a tribunal. This is not a technical aspiration. The technology exists.

The infrastructure can be built. The only variable is whether INEC will deploy it completely or whether it will again find reasons, BVAS malfunction, network failure, or operational challenges, to explain why some results arrived at collation centers without the digital verification that would have made manipulation impossible.

Prof. Amupitan has spoken well about 2027. He has said the right things about apathy, about safety, and about ideas over war. Now say this, clearly and on the record: IReV will function in every polling unit in 2027. No exceptions. No excuses. And then build the systems, train the personnel, test the infrastructure, and hold every INEC official accountable for delivering it.

The game changer only changes the game when it actually works. Build it to work everywhere and for everyone.

The Creative Think Tank Group Nigeria is committed to ideas that serve the Nigerian people and to a 2027 election where every Nigerian can verify their vote was counted before anyone disputes that it was.

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20/08/2026

Prof. Amupitan, We Agree Again. Now Build the Environment That Makes It Possible.

"Let the 2027 campaign be a marketplace of ideas, not a theater of war." — Prof. Joash Amupitan, Chairman, INEC.

Once again, the INEC Chairman has said exactly the right thing. And once again, this institution, which has now responded to his public statements multiple times across our Osun series, agrees without reservation.

A marketplace of ideas is precisely what Nigeria needs in 2027. Candidates debating policy. Competing on competence. Presenting records rather than performing loyalty. Allowing voters to choose based on what each candidate will actually do for them, rather than which ethnic calculation, religious identity, or patronage network they represent. This is the election Nigeria has always needed and rarely received. We want it too, and urgently.

But Prof. Amupitan, Here Is the Problem. You see, a marketplace of ideas requires a secure marketplace. In the weeks before the Osun election, the election your commission just administered, a child was shot in his mother's shop during a campaign procession. Governors allegedly directed armed operatives toward rally venues. A federal anti-corruption agency froze a state government's account ten days before polling day, in a move the president himself acknowledged was inauspiciously timed.

That was not a marketplace of ideas. That was a theater of war before a single ballot was cast. And if the environment around a governorship election in one state looked like that, the environment around a presidential election in thirty-six states simultaneously will require exponentially more than a well-worded statement to keep from becoming something far worse.

What a marketplace of ideas actually requires is that INEC should enforce the rules against vote-buying, violence, and abuse of incumbency with the same rigour it applies to administrative requirements. It requires security agencies whose neutrality is not merely declared but demonstrated in how they deploy, who they protect, and who they pursue when electoral laws are broken.

It requires political parties to discipline candidates and agents who turn campaigns into theaters of war and face real consequences when they do not. It requires a legal framework whose timelines for electoral offenses actually deter the behavior before the election, not years after it when the damage is done and the office is occupied. Words, Prof. Amupitan, do not build a marketplace, but enforcement does.

Now, our position is very clear without any ambiguity. You have now given us two memorable statements in the lead-up to 2027: that apathy is the silent killer of democracy, and that the campaign should be a marketplace of ideas. Both are right. Both deserve to be made real, not merely repeated.

The Osun election showed that INEC can deliver a credible result when the conditions allow it. 2027 will test whether INEC can also shape those conditions, not just administer within them. That is the harder task. And it is the one that will define your legacy.

Build the marketplace, Prof. Amupitan, not with statements but with a system that truly works.

We are watching closely.

The Creative Think Tank Group Nigeria is committed to ideas that serve the Nigerian people and to a 2027 campaign season that competes on ideas, not on who can intimidate the most voters into staying home.

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19/08/2026

Former President Jonathan Is Right. And Nigeria Must Listen.

Former President Goodluck Jonathan, the man whose 2015 concession before the results were formally announced set the highest democratic standard any Nigerian president has ever demonstrated, has spoken about the Osun election.

He commends INEC, the security agencies, the political parties, and most importantly, the people of Osun State for the peaceful conduct of the election. He acknowledges that despite the challenges confronting Nigeria's democracy, the Osun outcome demonstrates that the country possesses the capacity to conduct elections that strengthen public confidence in democratic institutions.

He is right. And his voice on this subject carries a particular authority that few others in Nigerian public life can claim. This is not a routine post-election commendation from a political figure with something to gain.

Goodluck, Jonathan is the only sitting Nigerian president in the Fourth Republic who lost an election, accepted the result before it was formally announced, and walked away without litigation, without mobilizing loyalists, and without attempting to reverse what the voters had decided. That act of democratic grace in 2015 is the standard against which every subsequent Nigerian leader's relationship with electoral outcomes is measured.

When a man with that record says Osun demonstrated democratic capacity, it is not flattery. It is a calibrated assessment from someone who understands, at personal cost, what it means for an electoral process to be credible.

This institution has tracked the Osun election across nine consecutive pieces. We saw its full complexity: the EFCC account freeze, the Ilesa shooting that wounded a child in his mother's shop, the pre-election tensions, and the allegations of intimidation.

And yet: more than one million voters turned out. The IReV portal uploaded results in real time from the overwhelming majority of polling units. The margin was clear. The result was announced. And while the pre-election environment was troubled, the election day itself, by most credible accounts, was substantially more peaceful than the weeks that preceded it.

That is a genuine achievement. It deserves to be credited, as President Jonathan has credited it. But as Jonathan also notes, there are developments surrounding the election and its conduct that require attention. The pre-election violence, the institutional pressures, and the gaps in BVAS functionality, none of these disappear simply because the final result was credible. They must be documented, investigated, and corrected before 2027.

The lesson for 2027 is that Nigeria's democracy does not need perfection to be worth defending. It needs consistent, measurable improvement, election by election, institution by institution, and standard by standard.

Osun 2026 was not perfect. But it was better in important respects than previous cycles. And better sustained, documented, and built upon is how Nigeria eventually arrives at the elections it deserves.

Former President Jonathan's call for new boundaries of political conduct in off-cycle elections is the right call at the right moment. Those boundaries must be defined clearly, enforced consistently, and applied without regard to which party benefits or suffers from their enforcement.

The parties that behaved badly before August 15, whoever they were, in whatever form the evidence confirms, must face consequences proportionate to what they did. Not as political punishment. As a democratic necessity. Because the message an unpunished pre-election violation sends is the message every actor in 2027 will receive: that the boundaries do not actually hold.

President Jonathan demonstrated in 2015 that Nigerian democracy can produce leaders who place the country above personal ambition. The Osun election demonstrated in 2026 that Nigerian voters, given a reasonably fair process, will participate in significant numbers and accept a credible result. Both demonstrations matter. Both must be built upon.

The Creative Think Tank Group Nigeria joins former President Jonathan in commending what deserves commendation and in insisting that what went wrong before, during, and after this election is examined honestly and corrected urgently.

Nigeria's 2027 general election is now the test that matters most. Osun has shown it is possible to get this right. Now do it at scale.

The Creative Think Tank Group Nigeria is committed to ideas that serve the Nigerian people and to elections that keep getting better until they finally match the democracy Nigeria's citizens deserve.

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17/08/2026

The people of Osun have spoken. Now, Governor Adeleke must protect what they have said and not disappoint them.

A Statement by the Creative Think Tank Group Nigeria on the Outcome of the Osun State Election | August 17, 2026.

Governor Ademola Adeleke of the Accord Party has been declared the winner of the 2026 Osun State governorship election, securing 511,067 votes, representing 50.8 per cent of the 1,005,800 votes cast across the state's 3,763 polling units. His closest challenger, APC candidate Bola Oyebamiji, polled 444,815 votes, while Najeem Salaam of the ADC came third with 17,180 votes.

The people of Osun have delivered their verdict clearly, with margin, and through a process whose results were uploaded to the IReV portal in real time for the world to verify. We have published eight consecutive pieces tracking this election, from the EFCC account freeze through the Ilesa shooting through our election day message to every actor involved. We end this series the only way it can honestly end: with the result and with what must now follow it.

Congratulations to Governor Adeleke. You have won re-election through a democratic process contested under enormous pressure, a pre-election account freeze, alleged intimidation, violence that wounded a child in Ilesa, and the full weight of federal political opposition bearing down on your campaign.

That you emerged with a clear mandate is a testament to the Osun voters who chose to exercise their franchise regardless of the environment around them. Govern with the same determination you campaigned with. The margin you received is not a mandate for triumphalism; it is a mandate for service. The 444,815 Osun residents who voted for your opponent are your constituents too. Govern for all of them.

A word to INEC and Prof. Amupitan. You said apathy is the silent killer of democracy. You said no citizen should choose between safety and the ballot. On August 15, more than one million Osun voters turned out, a figure that, against a backdrop of pre-election tension and violence, represents a genuine act of civic courage. They answered your call.

INEC uploaded results from 3,664 of the 3,763 polling units to IReV, not perfect, but significantly better than past performance. Where the system worked, it deserves credit. Where it fell short, BVAS malfunctions at several polling units, the 99 polling units whose results were not yet uploaded at declaration; those gaps must be documented, analyzed, and closed before 2027. Osun was a rehearsal. The general election will be the real thing.

The democratic path forward is through the tribunal, not the streets. If you believe the result does not reflect what happened at the polling units, Nigeria has constitutional mechanisms to test that claim. Use them. But use them honestly, with evidence, and with the discipline to accept whatever outcome an impartial process delivers.

The example you set in how you handle defeat is the example every Nigerian political actor will follow or ignore in 2027. Set the right one. Despite reports of intimidation, vote-buying, and electoral violence in some areas, voting proceeded peacefully in many parts of the state, and the result is clear enough that its legitimacy is difficult to contest without evidence that the outcome was different from what was announced.

This matters enormously heading into 2027. It tells every Nigerian voter who stayed home in 2023 because they believed their vote would not count that votes in Osun counted today. That the IReV system, when it functions, makes manipulation harder. That a million-plus voters who came out despite everything produced a result that reflects what they actually said.

That is the lesson of August 15, 2026. Not Adeleke's victory specifically, but the demonstration that Nigeria's democracy, under sustained pressure, can still deliver a credible result. Build on it. 2027 is watching.

May Nigeria rise and shine again.

The Creative Think Tank Group Nigeria is committed to ideas that serve the Nigerian people and to elections that give Nigerians a reason to vote by proving that when they do, it counts.

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15/08/2026

First voter by 8.34am in IPERINDO RA04/ PU 003 Community Grammer School, IPERINDO.

ATAKUMOSA EAST

15/08/2026

Today is Osun's Day. Protect It.

An Election Day Message from The Creative Think Tank Group Nigeria.

To the good people of Osun State: Come out. Vote. Your voice matters more today than any politician's money, threat, or promise. Do not let anyone buy, intimidate, or frighten you away from your constitutional right. Vote your conscience and go home safely.

To INEC and Prof. Amupitan: Today is the day your words become your record. You said no citizen should choose between safety and the ballot. You said apathy must be confronted head-on. Prove it in every ward, every polling unit, and every collation center, from opening to the final result announcement. Count what was cast. Announce what was counted. Nothing else is acceptable.

To the security agencies: Your mandate today is to protect voters, not parties, not candidates, not principals. Anyone who brings violence to a polling unit is a criminal regardless of which party badge they wear. Treat them accordingly. Be visible. Be neutral. Be professional.

To the APC, Accord Party, ADC, and all parties: The people of Osun are watching. Win or lose, accept the verdict of the ballot, not the verdict of thugs, not the verdict of manipulated results, not the verdict of a court that may not convene for years. If you believe in democracy, demonstrate it today in how you conduct yourselves, not only in the speeches you give when you win.

To everyone: Nigeria's democracy is on the ballot today in Osun, not just a governorship. What happens in those polling units today will tell every Nigerian watching whether participation is worth the risk. Make it worth it.

The Creative Think Tank Group Nigeria is committed to ideas that serve the Nigerian people and to an Osun election that every Nigerian, regardless of party, can point to as proof that democracy here can work.

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14/08/2026

The Opposition Is Finally in the Same Room. Now the Hard Work Begins.

The Creative Think Tank Group Nigeria reacts to Nigeria's opposition party summit.

On August 18, 2026, in Abuja, the leaders of Nigeria's main opposition parties will meet for the first time in a structured, facilitated summit aimed solely at forming the united front that every serious observer of Nigerian democracy has argued is the only credible path to an alternative in 2027.

The summit is convened by the G100, a coalition of concerned Nigerians, and brings together Atiku Abubakar of the ADC, Peter Obi and Rabiu Kwankwaso of the NDC, and Oyo State Governor Seyi Makinde of the APM, alongside representatives of the PDP, PRP, and SDP, six parties whose combined voter base, if unified behind a single candidate, represents a genuinely formidable electoral force. This is significant, and it deserves to be said plainly.

Nigeria's 2027 election will not be decided by the opposition's individual strengths. Each of the leaders gathering in Abuja on August 18 contested 2023 alone, and each was defeated alone, even as, collectively, the opposition commanded a combined vote share that exceeded the ruling party's in many assessments.

The fragmentation of 2023 was the APC's greatest electoral asset. A divided opposition does not simply lose more narrowly. It loses comprehensively, because the arithmetic of vote-splitting in a first-past-the-post system rewards consolidation and punishes division with brutal mathematical precision.

With barely a year to go before campaigns kick into high gear, the question hanging over Abuja is not whether the opposition wants change; it is whether the figures gathered around that table on August 18 want it badly enough to sacrifice the individual ambitions that have historically prevented the unity that would make change possible.

That question has never been satisfactorily answered in Nigerian opposition politics. August 18 will not answer it either, not definitively, not in a single summit. But it may begin the conversation in a structured, facilitated way that previous attempts at opposition unity have never managed to sustain.

The G100 has been deliberately clear about its role: it does not presume to dictate outcomes. Its mandate is to facilitate dialogue, build confidence, and help create conditions in which participating parties can openly consider the difficult questions ahead.
Those difficult questions are real and must be named honestly.

Who leads the ticket? Between Atiku, Obi, and Kwankwaso, all of whom have presidential ambitions, all of whom bring different regional bases and different voter demographics, the question of which name appears at the top of the ballot is not a procedural matter. It is the question that has destroyed every previous opposition alliance before it was fully formed.

Who controls the structure? A coalition of parties is only as functional as its internal accountability, its agreements about resource-sharing, its down-ballot positions, and what happens to the losing principals when the unity candidate is selected.

What is the unifying message? An alliance built only on opposition to Tinubu is an alliance without a program. We have argued, throughout our body of work, that Nigerian politics suffers from the absence of genuine policy competition. An opposition coalition that offers only "not the incumbent" is an improvement over fragmentation, but it is not the transformational alternative Nigeria's governance crisis actually demands.

As an independent institution, The Creative Think Tank Group Nigeria does not take sides in electoral competition between parties. Our standard is consistent: we support the process that produces the most credible, most competitive, and most accountable democratic outcome, regardless of which candidate or coalition that favors.

What we observe, on the facts, is this: a united opposition that contests 2027 on the basis of a genuine policy program, a credible candidate with demonstrated competence, and a coalition structure with the internal discipline to sustain itself through the pressures of a contested campaign would represent the most meaningful democratic check on the APC that Nigeria has produced since the 2015 transition.

What we also observe is this: the history of Nigerian opposition coalitions is a history of promise followed by collapse, of egos competing where sacrifice was required, of short-term calculation defeating long-term vision, and of individual principals who found the cost of unity too high until the night of the results, when they discovered the cost of division was higher.

August 18 must be the beginning of a different story. Not because the leaders in that room are fundamentally different from those who have tried and failed before, but because the stakes of another failed opposition are now higher than they have ever been. The suffering documented in every piece this institution has published over the past year is the consequence of a governance environment that a genuinely competitive democratic contest could begin to change.

A word to the leaders meeting on August 18, 2026. You have a chance that most oppositions never receive: a structured, facilitated platform, a coalition of citizens creating conditions for frank conversation, and a population whose patience with the status quo is visibly running out.

Do not waste it on ego. Do not trade a historic opportunity for the comfort of being the biggest fish in a fragmented pond. Do not emerge from that room with another communiqué that sounds like unity but commits to nothing.

Come with the willingness to sacrifice. To compromise. To place the Nigeria that needs a credible alternative above the personal ambition that has always been the opposition's greatest enemy. The task ahead, as the G100 itself noted, will require patience, courage, and above all, sacrifice.

Nigeria is watching.

May Nigeria rise and shine again.

The Creative Think Tank Group Nigeria is committed to ideas that serve the Nigerian people and to a 2027 election that offers Nigerians a genuinely credible, competitive, and accountable alternative regardless of which side of the ballot it comes from.

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12/08/2026

Nigeria Belongs to All of Us. Withdraw That Statement Now.

The Creative Think Tank Group Nigeria responds to Sheikh Yahaya Jingi's sensitive remarks.

At a political event in Kano State attended by prominent figures such as the Kano State Governor and the Jigawa State Governor, Sheikh Yahaya Jingir, National Chairman of the Council of Ulama of JIBWIS, declared that Nigeria is a Muslim country, Christians are infidels, and anyone who does not accept a Muslim-Muslim presidential ticket should leave Nigeria because "it belongs to us."

We respond directly. Without diplomatic softening. Without the careful hedging that the gravity of these words does not deserve.

What was said was wrong. Factually, constitutionally, and morally. Nigeria is not a Muslim country. It is not a Christian country. It is a secular, multi-religious state whose constitution explicitly prohibits the adoption of any state religion, a provision that exists precisely to protect every Nigerian, Muslim, and Christian alike from exactly the kind of exclusionary claim Sheikh Jingir made at that event.

The Nigerian who is Christian did not arrive here from somewhere else. They were born here, as their parents were, as their grandparents were. Their names are on the same voters' register. Their taxes fund the same government. Their children attend the same public schools. Their blood has been spilled on the same soil, from Biafra to the Middle Belt to Southern Kaduna, where this institution has spent months documenting exactly the kind of tension that statements like this one ignite and sustain.

To tell them to leave is not political commentary. It is the language of exclusion, and exclusion, spoken by a prominent religious figure at a politically attended event in the months before a presidential election, does not stay in the room where it was said.

Now, let us take a look at the context that makes this very dangerous. Sheikh Jingir made these remarks at a mass wedding event in Kano, with governors present and a large audience. This is not a private opinion expressed in a private conversation. This is a public declaration by a nationally prominent religious figure in a politically charged environment, attended by elected officials who did not publicly repudiate what he said while he said it.

The 2027 election is less than eighteen months away. Nigeria is already navigating unprecedented levels of insecurity, economic hardship, and civic distrust. Communities across the Middle Belt and Southern Kaduna are burying their dead, killed in violence that every serious analyst agrees is inflamed by exactly the kind of identity-based exclusionary rhetoric that tells one group of Nigerians that another group considers this country theirs alone.

As Nigeria approaches its next election cycle and grapples with pressing security challenges, the rekindling of religious tensions poses serious risks to social cohesion. This is not an abstract concern. It is a documented pattern with a documented body count.

What we are calling for is that Sheikh Jingir must withdraw this statement publicly, completely, and without qualification. Not a clarification. Not a context. A withdrawal, acknowledging that these words were wrong, that Nigeria belongs to every Nigerian, and that no religious or political leader has the authority to tell a Nigerian citizen to leave their own country.

The governors who were present at that event must speak. Their silence is itself a statement. If they do not repudiate what was said in the room they sat in, they have endorsed it by their presence and their quiet.

The Nigerian government must take seriously the incendiary potential of this rhetoric in the months ahead. Femi Fani-Kayode has already called on the DSS to invite and caution the cleric before his words set the country ablaze. Whether or not that specific step is taken, the government cannot treat this as a matter of free religious expression. There is no free expression right that includes telling millions of fellow citizens to leave their own country.

As an institution, here is our word to every Nigerian. As one Muslim commentator noted, "As a Muslim, I firmly reject religious extremism. Sheikh Jingir's remarks are his own and stem from self-interest. Such statements are demagogic."

We echo that voice, because the danger of statements like Sheikh Jingir's is not only what they do to Christians. It is what they do to the Muslim Nigerians who do not share his position but who will be judged by his words in the communities where those words have now landed.

Nigeria's unity has never been a given. It has always been a choice, made daily, in the spaces between what divides us, by citizens who decided that what holds us together is worth more than what separates us. That choice is harder to make today than it was last week.

Sheikh Jingir knows that. Every governor who sat in that room is aware of this. Withdraw the statement immediately and speak out to protect the country you claim to lead and serve, before the words cause the damage that words like this have always done in Nigeria's history.

The Creative Think Tank Group Nigeria is committed to ideas that serve the Nigerian people, all of them, of every faith, in every region, and to a Nigeria where no citizen is ever told to leave the country their ancestors built alongside everyone else's.

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11/08/2026

A Child Shot at a Campaign Rally. Six Days Before the Election. This Is What We Warned About.

His name is Ilesanmi. He is between 12 and 14 years old. He was sitting inside his mother's shop in Ilesa, Osun State, on Saturday morning, not at a rally, not in a crowd, not in any political space, when a stray bullet struck him in the thigh.

He was shot during a shooting incident that erupted at an APC campaign procession in Ilesa, Osun State, leaving several other people injured as well. Spent cartridges and Amotekun personnel caps were recovered at the scene by police officers who responded to the incident. The Osun State Commissioner for Environment, Mayowa Adejoorin, was arrested in connection with the shooting. Six days before the August 15 governorship election, a child in his mother's shop has been shot.

This institution has tracked the Osun election across five consecutive pieces: the EFCC account freeze, the call to confront electoral apathy, the President's directive to vacate the freeze, and our direct challenge to INEC Chairman Prof. Amupitan to turn his words about safety and the ballot into a lived reality.

We said the environment around this election was being shaped by multiple pressures that election observers must watch with the greatest vigilance. We said that an election whose pre-vote period is defined by legal interventions, alleged intimidation, and political tension will produce exactly the kind of civic fear that drives voters away from the polls.

A child shot at a rally. Protests in the streets. A commissioner was arrested. Residents are calling for a transparent investigation into the reported involvement of security personnel. This is what we warned about. Eyewitnesses allege that the Chief Whip of the Osun State House of Assembly was present alongside Amotekun Corps personnel when the shooting occurred and that the Amotekun operatives and the lawmaker shot at APC members during the campaign.

The Accord Party, whose leader was arrested, describes the arrest as politically motivated. The APC alleges that armed Amotekun operatives were led to the rally venue and opened fire on its supporters. The police are investigating. The circumstances of who fired first, what triggered the confrontation, and whose decision it was to bring weapons to that street remain under active investigation and are genuinely contested between multiple accounts.

We do not adjudicate between those accounts. That is the court's role, and the investigation must be allowed to reach its conclusion transparently. But what is not contested is this: a child sustained a gunshot injury to his thigh while sitting at his mother's shop during a political campaign procession in Ilesa. That fact belongs to no party's narrative. It belongs to a boy and his mother.

Prof. Amupitan said no citizen should choose between their safety and their right to vote. The people of Ilesa are now choosing, not on election day but before it.

In the calculation every voter in that community is now making about whether showing up on August 15 is worth the risk of being in the wrong place at the wrong moment, the way Ilesanmi was in the wrong place at the wrong moment on Saturday morning.

This is how electoral violence suppresses votes without having to directly prevent anyone from reaching a polling unit. It does not need to block the road. It only needs to make the road feel dangerous. Once the road feels dangerous enough, voters stay home, and whoever benefits from lower turnout in that community wins the suppression before a single ballot is cast.

Our demands are very clear. INEC must deploy maximum security presence across Osun State on August 15 with specific attention to Ilesa and every community where pre-election violence has now been documented.

The police investigation into Saturday's shooting must be concluded transparently, publicly, and without political interference, regardless of which party or which government officials its findings implicate.
Every voter in Osun must be able to reach their polling unit, cast their ballot, and return home safely. That is not a preference. It is a constitutional guarantee. And it is now INEC's specific, named, dated responsibility to deliver it.

Ilesanmi was sitting in his mother's shop.
He did not choose to be in that election. That election came to him through a stray bullet fired in the political contest of adults who are responsible for the environment that produced it.

The politicians campaigning in Ilesa on Saturday, and the government responsible for the security forces present there, bear responsibility for that child's wound.

The question now is not what happened. It is what happens next and whether Nigeria's electoral authorities will ensure that what happened in Ilesa on Saturday is the last act of pre-election violence in Osun, not the first of many.

May peace reign in Osun State.

The Creative Think Tank Group Nigeria is committed to ideas that serve the Nigerian people and to an August 15 in Osun where every voter reaches their polling unit, casts their ballot, and returns home safely, freely, and confident that their vote was counted.

[email protected]

The Creative Think Tank Group Nigeria

20/08/2026

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