By Yusuf Faizah
Sports betting has gradually evolved from a recreational activity into a way of life for many Nigerian youths. What was once a weekend pastime has become a daily routine, with betting shops filled with customers and mobile betting apps recording thousands of users every day. From university campuses to busy city streets, betting has become deeply embedded in youth culture.

One of the major reasons for this growing trend is the promise of quick financial rewards. In a country where unemployment and economic hardship remain significant challenges, many young people see betting as an alternative source of income. The possibility of turning a small stake into a substantial payout makes it particularly attractive to students and job seekers seeking financial relief.

Technology has further accelerated this trend by making betting more accessible than ever. With a smartphone and internet connection, users can place bets within minutes from virtually anywhere. At the same time, betting companies continue to expand their reach through aggressive advertising, sponsorship of sports programmes, and promotional bonuses that attract new customers.

At the centre of this betting culture is football, Nigeria’s most popular sport. Millions of young Nigerians closely follow leagues such as the English Premier League and believe their knowledge of teams, players, and statistics gives them an advantage in predicting match outcomes. This confidence often encourages repeated participation, even after experiencing losses.

Beyond economic hardship, the widespread promotion of betting and its growing social acceptance have also contributed to its popularity. Constant exposure to betting advertisements, discussions among friends, and success stories shared on social media have helped normalize gambling as part of everyday life for many young people.

However, this growing culture comes with significant risks. Many young people lose money they cannot afford to lose, while others develop gambling habits that negatively affect their education, employment, finances, and personal relationships. The excitement of occasional wins can quickly give way to frustration and financial distress as losses accumulate.

Sports betting can serve as a form of entertainment when approached responsibly, but it should never be viewed as a dependable source of income. As the industry continues to expand, greater efforts are needed to promote responsible gambling, strengthen public awareness, and address the economic conditions that push many young Nigerians toward betting in the first place.

Unless these issues are addressed, sports betting may continue to evolve from a recreational activity into a culture of financial dependence, with far-reaching consequences for Nigeria’s youth and society as a whole.

Yusuf Faizah
200 Level Student, Department of Development and Strategic Communication, University of Abuja.

By Abba Anwar

Kano State Governor Abba Kabir Yusuf makes a list of potential Awardees across West African sub-region, observed and screened by an African association named Réseau des Jeunes du Sahel pour le Progrès, le Développement et la Démocratie (Network of Sahel Youth for Progress, Development and Democracy), on infrastructural development in their respective states.

The top most Award from the association, called Sankofa Award of Excellence across various sectors, is given to people or leaders who excel in their respective areas of work or responsibilities.

With the recent disclosure made by the Commissioner of Public Procurement, Projects Monitoring and Evaluation, Nura Ma’aji Sumaila, on the state of infrastructural development and payments of contracts in the state, the association included Kano to be part of the states across Nigeria and West African countries, screened for an Award of Excellence.

Source close to the association reveals that, Governor Yusuf’s achievements in the area of infrastructural development, could not be neglected and the Governor stands a better position to be seen and amplified across the globe. As a result of his commitment and service to humanity.

Parts of the major reasons that informed the association’s decision to include Governor Yusuf for Sankofa Award of Excellence for Infrastructural Development in West Africa is his genuine inclusion of infrastructures that are human centred, modern, location specified and standardization process and procedures.

According to the source, the Screening Committee saddled with the responsibility of selecting qualified personalities across West Africa are in their final stage of releasing the result. Assuring that, under infrastructural development, Kano excels. Though not officially announced.

When Governor Yusuf gets this Award, he will be the second person from Nigeria who bags the Award. Last year the Deputy Senate President Barau I Jibrin, PhD, CFR, got the SANKOFA Award for Legislative Excellence in Africa. Coincidentally, Governor Yusuf who is also from Kano state, would be the second Nigerian in this category.

The President of the association Mr Fassoko Doumbia, from Mali, confirmed to my source that, from all indication, “Kano State Governor, from Nigeria, Mr Abba Kabir Yusuf is in the forefront of those screened for the Award.”

With this recognition of excellence, the Award places Governor Yusuf to be one of the best Nigerian governors. And the best across West Africa on infrastructural development. One good thing about the Award is, it will as well serve as an engine oil for state commitment and unwavering service delivery.

Mr Doumbia reveals further that “… it is amazing looking at the unmatched number of completed and ongoing projects as Kano has 799 completed projects and 709 projects at various stages of completion. It is encouraging to see that Governor Yusuf is executing over 1,508 developmental projects across all 44 LGAs.”

What keeps hope and commitment alive are the transparent monitoring, evaluation and effective payment to contractors. Of which out of N928 Billion of the total contract sum, the state has already paid over N600 Billion, that’s 64.7% payment rate.
Unlike in many states in Nigeria and West Africa. The association believes that Kano institutionalized transparency through the Ministry of Public Procurement, Projects Monitoring and Evaluation.

The screening committee appreciated Kano’s strategic and balanced infrastructure spread, between urban and rural areas plus improved security. For urban renewal it has the sum of N169 Billion. While there are 5km roads in 38 LGAs with the sum of N118 Billion. They appreciated the rural infrastructure across 44 LGAs with the sum of N397 Billion for roads, education, healthcare, and social services.

While under security infrastructure the total sum of N6.863 Billion for Neighborhood Security Watch offices in 36 LGAs. This assured deliberate, balanced development with value for money, quality delivery, and measurable impact on the lives of the people. All courtesy Governor Yusuf.

It serves also as indices of how Governor Yusuf makes the list for such Award, that his infrastructures are signals for the delivery of landmark, human-centered projects as Kano completed tangible projects that directly improve lives of the citizenry, with 40 metropolitan roads, 44 PHCs, 120 schools, 5 water plants, with the ongoing Dan Agundi and Tal’udu flyovers at over 80% completion.

It has also been discovered that, Kano enjoys proven technical leadership and political will. Which glaringly displays the political will and technical competence required to drive massive infrastructure without corruption or delays. This is part of the major engagements being identified, which eventually resulted into the popular Sankofa Award of Excellence.

Anwar writes from Kano
Saturday, 25th July, 2026

By Abass Sherifat Taiwo

Returning Officer Adenike Oladiji, a professor and Vice-Chancellor of the Federal University of Technology, announced the results in the early hours of Sunday, at roughly 3:13 a.m. Incumbent Governor Biodun Oyebanji of the APC won comfortably, polling 319,224 votes across the state’s 16 local government areas. His closest challenger, the PDP’s Oluwole Oluyede, trailed far behind with 40,543 votes, while the ADC’s Dare Bejide came in third with 12,872 votes.

Of the 384,940 voters accredited for the election, 375,777 cast valid votes, a validity rate of about 97.6%, suggesting relatively few spoiled or rejected ballots.

Oyebanji’s win carries added weight as the first consecutive re-election in Ekiti’s history, a state known for unseating incumbents since 1999. His dominance was also total: he won all sixteen LGAs, and even his closest contest, in Ikere, was still a comfortable margin. His five strongest councils alone delivered nearly half his statewide votes, showing concentrated rather than thin support.

Elite alignment mattered too. For the first time, every living former Ekiti governor backed his re-election, leaving the opposition without any prominent defectors to rally behind. This unified backing functioned as a coordinated endorsement strategy, a visible signal of consensus that opposition parties had no comparable message to counter.

Between the opposition parties, PDP’s showing is more telling than ADC’s. ADC placing third as a newer platform isn’t surprising, but PDP, a long-established national party, barely crossed 3,000 votes in most councils, pointing to weak grassroots structure rather than just a bad cycle. The deeper question is whether this reflects a structural failure or a failure to sustain visibility and message presence at the ward level between election cycles.

Party | Votes | % of Valid Votes
APC | 319,224 | 84.95%
PDP | 40,543 | 10.79%
ADC | 12,872 | 3.43%
ADP | ~1,289 | 0.34%
Accord | 564 | 0.15%
LP | ~263 | 0.07%
AAC | ~188 | 0.05%

When the vote totals of every opposition party are combined, they amount to roughly 55,719 votes, or about 14.83% of all valid votes cast, a stark contrast to the APC’s dominant 84.95% share on its own. Even in a hypothetical scenario where every opposition party ran on a single, fully united ticket, their combined total would still fall short of the APC’s by approximately 263,505 votes. This gap illustrates just how commanding Oyebanji’s victory was: it was not simply a matter of a divided opposition splitting votes among several parties, but a result that would have withstood even total opposition unity.

Following the Ekiti result, APC framed it as proof of growing national support ahead of 2027, pointing to the rise in its vote totals in the state from about 187,000 in 2022 to roughly 318,000 in 2026, and projecting even higher numbers for Tinubu in 2027. Opposition parties, including the ADC and SDP, pushed back, arguing that Ekiti’s off-cycle, low-turnout nature makes it a poor predictor of a national contest.

Both claims need scrutiny. APC’s growth trend is real, but it happened in a state the party already governs, where incumbency and federal attention worked in its favour, so it says more about consolidating an existing stronghold than expanding into contested territory. The opposition’s caution is fair, but understates that APC’s structural advantages, incumbency and federal resources, aren’t unique to Ekiti and could repeat elsewhere. The more accurate takeaway is that Ekiti confirms APC’s strength where it already holds power, without proving it can replicate that in genuinely competitive states by 2027.

ADC’s third-place finish in Ekiti, just 3.43% of the vote, looks unremarkable on its own, but it only makes sense next to the party’s national story. A year earlier, ADC had positioned itself as the face of a new opposition coalition, pulling in heavyweight names like Atiku Abubakar and Peter Obi with the promise of a unified front against the APC. That promise hasn’t held: Obi and Kwankwaso have since defected to a rival platform, the NDC, while ADC battles leadership disputes and court cases that put its own 2027 participation in doubt.

That is the real lesson here for coalition politics as a communication problem, not just a structural one. ADC did not fail for lack of big names, it had plenty. What it could not do was hold one coherent message together once multiple egos and regional bases began pulling in different directions. Whether it can still become the platform it promised by 2027 is uncertain, but Ekiti is an early sign of a bigger unraveling.

Beyond Ekiti, the result speaks to a deeper pattern in Nigerian opposition politics: alliances are far easier to announce than to sustain. This suggests APC’s greatest advantage going into the next general election may not be its own performance, but the opposition’s continued inability to stay united. The near-total validity rate and one-sided outcome in Ekiti also raise questions about how genuinely competitive Nigeria’s state elections currently are, and whether low-turnout, off-cycle polls like this one can reliably signal national voter sentiment.

The Ekiti result is less a story about Oyebanji’s popularity alone than about the opposition’s structural fragility. Even a fully united opposition ticket would not have closed the gap, which means the problem isn’t vote-splitting, it’s organisational weakness, unstable coalitions, and the absence of a party capable of matching APC’s machinery and incumbency advantages. What Nigeria’s opposition needs before 2027 isn’t just structural unity, but a coherent, disciplined communication strategy capable of sustaining one message across factions, something no coalition has yet demonstrated. Until Nigeria’s opposition can build a coalition that survives contact with real electoral pressure, results like Ekiti’s are likely to repeat themselves in APC strongholds heading into 2027.

By Abass Sherifat Taiwo
Department of Development and Strategic communication University of Abuja
200level