Thousands of voters in Ekiti Saturday morning are trooping out to polling centres across the state to elect their next governor, Peoples Gazette can report.

The poll would be held in 2,445 polling units located in 177 wards across the 16 Local Government Areas in Ekiti State.

The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) had announced that there are 988,923 registered voters in the state.

Meanwhile, only 749,065 persons who have collected their Permanent Voters Cards (PVCs) would be eligible to vote in today’s exercise.

The Gazette reports that security officials, particularly the police, were in the polling units already visited.

Also, voting materials have arrived in many polling centres of the state.

Essentially, voting starts at 8:30 am.

Candidates of sixteen political parties are participating in the governorship election.

The political parties include; Accord Party, African Action Congress, African Democratic Congress, Action Democratic Party, All Progressives Congress, All Progressives Grand Alliance, Allied Peoples Movement, All Peoples Party, Labour Party, New Nigeria Peoples Party, and National Rescue Movement

Others are; Peoples Democratic Party, Peoples Redemption Party, Social Democratic Party, Young Peoples Party, and Zenith Labour Party.

Analysts, however, say the battle is between the candidates of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Abiodun Oyebanji; the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP); Olabisi Kolawole, and Social Democratic Party (SDP), Segun Oni.