Ekiti Governor Oyebanji Faces Backlash, Warned To Stop Turning State Workers Into Political Foot Soldiers Amid Threats | Sahara Reporters

Nwapa, in a statement issued on Wednesday, August 19, 2026, accused Oyebanji of attempting to turn Ekiti State’s civil service into a political mobilisation machine for his administration.

Human rights activist, Francis Nwapa, has warned against alleged attempts by the Ekiti State Governor, Biodun Oyebanji, to compel civil servants to defend his administration on social media, describing the move as an abuse of public institutions and an attack on democratic freedoms.

Nwapa, in a statement issued on Wednesday, August 19, 2026, accused Oyebanji of attempting to turn Ekiti State’s civil service into a political mobilisation machine for his administration.

He said reports that the governor reprimanded public servants for failing to defend him online and allegedly threatened consequences for workers perceived to be sympathetic to his critics were “not a minor administrative hiccup” but evidence of “anti-democratic instincts” in Nigerian governance.

“What Oyebanji is demanding is not loyalty to the state. It is servitude to himself,” Nwapa said.

He said that civil servants were employed to serve the public and not to engage in online campaigns designed to praise a governor or attack his critics.

“Civil servants are not employed to be data boys and data ladies for any governor. They are not recruited to spend their working hours manufacturing digital praise-singing for a political principal or waging online warfare against citizens who dare to ask questions,” he said.

According to him, public workers’ responsibilities are to the people and the Constitution rather than to the political interests of whoever occupies the Government House.

Nwapa said any administration that had to mobilise its workforce to defend itself online had raised questions about its ability to convince citizens through its record in office.

“A government that must mobilise its own workforce to defend it online, under threat of reprisal, has already confessed something important: that it cannot win the argument on the strength of its record alone,” he said.

He said effective governance should be measured through functioning hospitals, decent wages, quality public education, security and transparent use of public funds rather than “conscripted applause.”

Nwapa also criticised the governor’s reported claim that criticism on social media was insignificant because “there are no polling units on social media.”

He noted that social media have become an important platform through which citizens, particularly young people and working-class Nigerians, scrutinise government policies and hold public officials accountable.

“Social media has no ballot boxes, true, but it is where working people, students, artisans and the unemployed gather to interrogate power in real time, between the four-year intervals that elections allow them,” Nwapa said.

“To tell citizens their voices only count once every four years is to tell them, in essence, to be silent and obedient in between. That is not democracy. That is managed consent.”

Nwapa further raised concern over an alleged threat that political appointees who failed to defend the administration or were perceived to support its critics would have their “matter” attended to.

He described such an alleged threat as “naked political intimidation dressed up as administrative discipline.”

“If true, it means livelihoods, appointments and careers are being held hostage to enforced political loyalty,” he said.

Nwapa noted that the alleged conduct was not peculiar to Ekiti State, accusing politicians across Nigeria of using public resources and political structures to create online support networks aimed at suppressing criticism.

“From state to state, ruling politicians of every bourgeois party have spent public resources building armies of online attack squads whose sole function is to shout down citizens, distort criticism as sabotage, and manufacture an illusion of popularity that the ballot box and the streets often tell a very different story about,” he said.

Nwapa maintained that public servants should be free to hold political opinions, refuse to participate in online political battles and carry out their official duties without fear of victimisation.
“I say plainly: criticism is not treason, and silence is not betrayal,” he said.

He called on the Nigeria Labour Congress, Trade Union Congress, civil society organisations and relevant public sector unions in Ekiti State to oppose any attempt to compel civil servants to act as political foot soldiers.

Nwapa also urged Oyebanji to withdraw the alleged threat and focus on improving governance and accountability.
“I call on Governor Oyebanji to retract this threat and to understand that legitimacy is earned through performance and accountability, not extracted through fear,” he said.

“The answer to public anger is not a bigger army of online defenders. It is better governance, governance accountable to the working people of Ekiti, not to the ego of any single office holder.”