OSUN State governor, Senator Ademola Adeleke, on Sunday, secured his re-election for a second term in office, following his declaration by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) as the winner of the August 15, governorship election.
Governor Adeleke, who ran on the ticket of the Accord, won 19 of the 30 local governments that make up the state, polling 511,067 votes, to beat his closest challenger, Asiwaju Bola Oyebamiji of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who won 444, 815 votes. Candidate of the African Democratic Congress (ADC), Najeem Salaam came a distant third with 17,180 votes.
Adeleke was declared the winner of the election on Sunday morning after an overnight results collation exercise in Osogbo, the state capital. Professor Joshua Olalekan Ogunwole, the state returning officer for INEC, said that Adeleke secured 511,067 votes to defeat his closest challenger in the tightly contested election. Adeleke won in 19 of the 30 local governments, while Oyebamiji won in 11 council areas.
The build-up to the election had been marred by threats of violence and killings in different parts of the country, which ignited fears of possible voter apathy at the election.
But, the turnout of a little over 43 percent of the 2.3 million registered voters became historic and a national landmark in recent times, following rising voter apathy that had, on a national scale, dragged down voter participation to as low as 26 percent.
According to the returning officer, Professor Ogunwole, a total of 1,010,684 voters were accredited for the polls, while total votes cast stood at 1, 005,800. Votes rejected amounted to 20,721, while 985,079 votes were declared valid.
Governor Adeleke, while making his initial response to the victory declaration, said that he had received a call from President Bola Tinubu and that he expected a similar call from his closest challenger, Oyebamiji.
While Adeleke was able to secure his second term in office, beating the same party, the APC, on the two occasions in 2022 and 2026, his victory this time has also shown a significant improvement in vote haul. In 2022, he won 403,371 votes to secure victory over the APC, which scored 375, 027 votes. In the 2026 exercise, Adeleke scored 511,067 votes to beat Oyebamili , who won 444, 815 votes. While he won in 2022 with barely 28,000 votes, in 2026, his voting strength had more than doubled, with more than 66,000 votes difference between him and his challenger.
Close watchers of the Osun scenario would agree that not a few factors combined to aid Adeleke to neutralise the threat of federal might: the invasion of no fewer than 10 APC governors, the militarisation of the state with nearly 50,000 security operatives, and a persistent threat of violence.
Investigations revealed that one of the factors included the massive infrastructure development effected in the state by the Adeleke administration, the decision to continue to pay local government workers despite the seizure of the funds accruing into the local government accounts in the state, and the consistency in payment of staff salaries and pensions, among others. Some of the key factors are highlighted below.
A people resolute on delivering Adeleke
Osun governor, Senator Adeleke, secured his second term in office at the election conducted on Saturday because of the doggednesss and the determination of the people of the state.
The people showed resilience in the face of intimidation and violence that were unleashed on various communities across the state and came out en masse to cast their votes and eventually reelected Adeleke.
Findings by the Nigerian Tribune showed that many issues were considered by the people before pitching their tents with the governor.
A major factor that aided the reelection of Adeleke was his record of service before the people. Many people had not given Adeleke the chance to perform in office when he was first elected in 2022; however, events of the last three and a half years in the state showed that the people were happy with his achievements.
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The civil servants, teachers, local government workers and retirees in the state believed that the governor had done tremendously well with the attention he gave their welfare. Adeleke also won the hearts of the people with his infrastructural development programmes that cut across the three senatorial districts of the state.
Many road projects were implemented in Iwo, Ede, Ile-Ife, Ilesa, Ila-Orangun, among other,s and these contributed to the decisions of the people.
Speaking during the election, a 70-year-old retired teacher, Mr Moshood Adereni, said the people of the state, particularly those drawing their salaries from government, would not pray for a return of the APC in the state.
He said, “Many of my colleagues that are pensioners have tasted the government of the APC and that of Adeleke; I can tell you that the majority of us do not pray for the return of that government.
“If Adeleke loses this election, we will be going back to the years of the locust. We have prayed against half salary and non-payment of entitlements in this state; therefore, we have resolved to vote for Adeleke so that there won’t be any stop to our welfare.”
Prolonged controversy over local government funds
Investigations among voters in Osun State indicated that the controversy ignited around the control of the 30 LGs in the state and the eventual seizure of the council’s Federal Allocations was a major undoing of the APC in the state. The fact that Governor Adeleke has continued to pay the workers even while the funds could not be accessed by the state and the councils meant that he easily won the hearts of the people as a governor with a lot of gold. “When the APC was in power and the issue of half salary cropped up, they blamed it on the Federal Government. They said that the government at the centre was not giving them enough allocations. Now that we have a government that is ready to clear the arrears and pay us regularly, it is the APC central government that seized the funds to keep us in perpetual penury,” a voter said on Saturday, as he insisted that Adeleke won the workers over by going outside his brief to pay the workers who are caught in the Federal Government/State crossfire.
Strategic project inaugurations
Aside from the decision of the Adeleke government to launch projects in key states including Ila-Orangun, Ilesa, Iwo, Ile-Ife, Osogbo and institute the University of Ilesa, the governor has also been inaugurating most of the projects around the campaign period, where he received the blessings of highly-elated traditional rulers. Roads that were abandoned for years in the major towns constituted part of the over 350 kilometres of internal roads fixed by Adeleke within the last three and a half years, something that not only swayed the communities, but also their traditional rulers. The Ataoja of Osogbo and the Timi of Ede are known traditional rulers, who openly canvassed support for Adeleke during the heat of the campaigns.
The Adeleke family name
Since the days of the patriarch of the Adeleke family, Senator Raji Ayoola Adeleke, the family has been associated with community service, philanthropy, scholarship, and good business. The first civilian governor of Osun, who was also a senator, Isiaka Adeleke, was said to have facilitated a lot of employment for Osun indigenes while he served in the state and after, a situation that further entrenched the family’s name in the hearts of the people. It is on record that the late senator remained a household name in the politics of the state and was in the running for another stint at the Government House when he suddenly died. Besides, members of the Adeleke dynasty are regarded as people who represent their hometown, Ede, and would always take steps to place the town on the global map. The establishment of Adeleke University in the town is one of the major landmarks that the people of Ede are said to always appreciate, thus drawing them closer to the Adelekes. Governor Adeleke was also regarded as one governor, who has given a major facelift to Ede with the dualisation of Ede/Akoda road, among others. The Adeleke family is also credited with helping to facilitate top-range hospitality businesses into the town, thus lifting it off the rusty nature it once wore in the years past.
Influence of Deji Adeleke and Davido
While the governor’s elder brother, Deji Adeleke, is regarded as the major backbone of the family, whose business networks span different sectors of the economy, his son, David, the Afrobeats singer popularly known as Davido, held the youth population spellbound throughout the campaign season. He was constantly on X (formerly Twitter) to propagate the programmes and policies of his uncle’s administration. In the last week of the campaign, up to Saturday, he took up an activist’s role, tackling opponents of his uncle and insisting that Governor Adeleke would win re-election. He was very vocal on the evening of August 15, as he released one tweet after the other to alert of alleged plans to truncate collation or possible attempts to declare the votes inconclusive. It is on record that many content creators followed Davido’s steps by also releasing content to back the Osun governor.
Senator Omisore and the Ile-Ife connection
Former national secretary of the APC, Senator Iyiola Omisore, was also a factor in the election. He earlier served as Chairman, Senate Committee on Appropriation, after his stint as the deputy governor of the state under Chief Bisi Akande. The manner of Omisore’s removal from the leadership of the APC in Abuja was a source of worry to his loyalists in the town and the party. But that concern worsened when he was disqualified from contesting the primaries for the just-concluded 2026 election. He has remained silent ever since, and the decision of many of his loyalists to defect to the Accord was a major blow to the APC. Though the party realised later in the day that it needed Omisore, sources said that the deed was already done, as his loyalists who had pitched tent with Accord, could no longer return.
Besides the Omisore factor, one issue that is said to be uppermost in the minds of most Ile-Ife Indigenes is the quest to produce the next governor after Adeleke. It was gathered that the people of Ile-Ife believed that supporting Adeleke would be the surest way for the city to produce a successor to the incumbent, who would only have a term to complete. Sources said that the people of Ile-Ife, in giving their votes to Adeleke, calculated that giving the governorship to another candidate from Osun West would prolong the possible period the seat would rotate to Osun East and then Ile-Ife. The people of Ile-Ife believe that when Adeleke completes his second term in office, the post of governor would then move from Osun West, and that the town would be able to make a case because the Ilesa axis of Osun East had utilised the two terms under Governor Rauf Aregbesola.
Osogbo and the governorship seat
Aside from Ile-Ife in Osun East, Osogbo in Osun Central is also agitating for the governorship seat after Adeleke, and it was reflected in the majority of the votes cast for the governor in the state capital. Indigenes of Osogbo believe that, as the state capital, the town was ripe enough to produce a governor, which a source said is behind the push by the traditional ruler of the town, the Ataoja of Osogbo, to openly support the Adeleke candidacy. Though Osogbo is in the Central Senatorial District, which has produced Olagunsoye Oyinlola, Gboyega Oyetola and Chief Bisi Akande, the two are angling for the seat, and its indigenes believe that with the massive population at their disposal, the two can push for the top post after the incumbent.
Role of President Tinubu
Though several APC stakeholders were said to be hell-bent on removing Adeleke from power, sources have said that President Tinubu was not originally convinced that Adeleke should be uprooted from Osun State. A viral video which surfaced on the internet in the build-up to the election had shown a chieftain of APC, telling a caucus of party leaders that when the president met Osun APC leaders in Abuja, he expected them to present Adeleke to him as their consensus candidate. The stalwart had said in the video that the president told the gathering that he was not expecting a governorship candidate from Osun APC, that he was only expecting Adeleke, but that he was aware that Oyetola was stoutly opposed to the governor joining the APC. Flowing from the viral video, Adeleke’s planned defection to the APC also collapsed in the wake of the endless crisis that has been rocking the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The governor was thereafter forced to pick Accord as his platform when it became obvious that he might gets stranded politically if he remained in the PDP.
It was gathered that, having assured the presdent that he would stand toe-to-toe with Adeleke in 2026, because, according to APC stalwarts, only 28,000 votes separate the two parties in the 2022 election, Tinubu was said to have given the party the go-ahead to pick a candidate. He was, however, said to have opposed the choice of Oyetola this time.
Sources, however, stated that the president’s partymen who wanted to tackle Adeleke were banking on the possibility of using the federal might to swing things, something a source said Tinubu did not fully subscribe to. For instance the president immediately ordered the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to unfreeze the accounts of the state when it placed a Post No Debit on the state’s main account in the days preceding the election. Governor Adeleke also said that Tinubu had called him in the early hours of Sunday to congratulate him. Those were clear signals to his partymen that he was not part of the strong-arm tactics to wrestle power from Adeleke, a source said.
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