How Ademola Adeleke survived the Federal APC onslaught, money politics and a fiercely contested election to secure another four years in Osun
By Abdulrahman Aliagan,
The 2026 Osun governorship election was far more than a contest between two political parties. It was a referendum on power, performance, political survival and the limits of federal influence. Against the backdrop of defections, bitter rivalry, allegations of vote buying, fears of violence and an increasingly polarised political environment, Governor Ademola Adeleke emerged from one of the most consequential electoral battles in the state’s recent history with 511,067 votes—defeating APC candidate Bola Oyebamiji, who polled 444,815 votes.
The election that became a test of power
On Saturday, August 15, 2026, Osun State became the centre of Nigeria’s political universe.
For months, the state had been transformed into a vast political theatre. Governors, former governors, federal lawmakers, party leaders, political godfathers, traditional rulers, campaign organisations and ordinary voters were drawn into an unusually intense struggle over who would control the affairs of the state for another four years.
But beneath the familiar language of electioneering—campaign promises, rallies, endorsements and party mobilisation—was a much larger battle.
It was a battle between incumbency and federal power.
It was a battle between Ademola Adeleke’s political machine and an APC establishment determined to reclaim Osun.
And, ultimately, it became a test of whether the enormous political influence that can be brought to bear by a ruling party at the centre can automatically translate into electoral victory at the state level.
The answer delivered by Osun voters was emphatic.
The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), after the collation of results from the state’s 30 local government areas, declared Adeleke, running on the platform of the Accord Party, winner with 511,067 votes, against APC’s Bola Oyebamiji, who scored 444,815 votes. Najeem Salaam of the African Democratic Congress polled 17,180 votes.
Adeleke therefore secured another four-year mandate.
But the numbers tell only part of the story.
The real story of Osun 2026 lies in everything that happened before the ballots were counted.
From 2018 to 2022: the roots of the battle
To understand the 2026 election, one must return to the political history of the state over the past decade.
Osun has never been an ordinary electoral battleground.
The state has witnessed some of the closest and most consequential governorship contests in Nigeria’s Fourth Republic.
In 2018, Gboyega Oyetola of the APC narrowly defeated Adeleke after the supplementary election, winning 255,505 votes against Adeleke’s 255,023. The margin was just 482 votes.
Four years later, the political pendulum swung dramatically.
In 2022, Adeleke, then running for the PDP, defeated Oyetola with 403,371 votes to Oyetola’s 375,027. The election was subsequently subjected to litigation, but Adeleke ultimately retained the governorship.
That victory did something more than change the occupant of Government House.
It created a political rivalry that refused to die.
Oyetola remained an influential figure within the APC and later became a major federal political actor. Adeleke, meanwhile, settled into office and began building his own political structure.
By 2026, the contest was no longer simply Adeleke versus APC.
It had become Adeleke versus a broad political establishment seeking to return Osun to the APC fold.
The PDP collapse and Adeleke’s political escape
Perhaps the most consequential development preceding the election was the dramatic change in Adeleke’s political platform.
The governor had originally won office under the PDP. But by the time the 2026 election approached, the PDP’s national and state structures had been weakened by internal conflicts and defections.
Adeleke ultimately contested under the Accord Party platform.
That move could have been politically fatal.
Instead, it became one of the defining calculations of the election.
The Accord platform allowed Adeleke to separate his re-election campaign from the increasingly troubled PDP structure and present himself directly to voters as the incumbent seeking a second term.
His supporters turned the campaign into a referendum on his administration.
His opponents saw it differently: they argued that his government had failed in critical areas and that Osun needed a return to the APC.
The political argument was therefore no longer simply about party labels.
It became a contest over performance versus political structure.
The APC comes back organised
The APC approached the 2026 election with a very different configuration from the one that lost to Adeleke in 2022.
The party had learnt from its previous defeat.
It mobilised influential political figures, expanded its organisational network and presented Bola Oyebamiji, a former Osun Commissioner for Finance and former federal appointee, as its candidate.
Oyebamiji was not simply campaigning against Adeleke. He was campaigning with the weight of a national ruling party behind him.
President Bola Ahmed Tinubu and former governor Gboyega Oyetola were among the major political figures associated with his campaign. The APC’s strategy was clearly aimed at reclaiming the state.
There was also a significant movement of political actors.
Several federal lawmakers and prominent politicians moved into the APC camp. Among them was Wole Oke, who became Director-General of the APC governorship campaign. Adeleke’s political structure consequently faced an increasingly formidable opposition.
The APC’s argument was straightforward:
Adeleke could be defeated.
The governor’s argument was equally direct:
Federal power could not replace the will of Osun voters.
That was the central ideological conflict of the election.
The Adeleke–Federal Government fault line
The relationship between the Adeleke administration and elements of the Federal Government had become increasingly confrontational.
Issues surrounding local government administration, federal allocations and political control generated public disagreements.
Adeleke accused the Federal Government of withholding more than N130 billion in local government allocations from Osun since early 2025, while the Oyetola camp rejected the allegation and argued that the issue was connected to the Supreme Court’s local-government autonomy ruling.
The dispute was significant because it transformed an ordinary state-federal disagreement into a political confrontation.
The governor’s supporters increasingly portrayed the election as a struggle between Osun’s autonomy and federal interference.
The APC, on the other hand, portrayed Adeleke’s administration as attempting to manufacture a political excuse for poor performance.
Both sides understood the power of the narrative. And both exploited it.
The campaign: promises, accusations and political mobilisation
By the final weeks, Osun had effectively become one enormous campaign ground.
The two major camps moved from town to town, ward to ward and community to community.
The campaign rhetoric became increasingly aggressive.
The APC attacked the Adeleke administration over infrastructure, education, governance and other areas of public policy. Its national secretary accused the governor of running a campaign based on fear and challenged him to make the election a referendum on performance.
Adeleke’s camp countered by highlighting what it described as achievements in education, infrastructure, healthcare and debt management.
The governor’s administration pointed, among other things, to improved educational rankings, reductions in infrastructure deficits and progress in primary healthcare.
But beneath the formal campaign speeches was another campaign.
The campaign of political survival.
Every defection mattered.
Every endorsement mattered.
Every local government mattered.
Every ward mattered.
And every traditional political structure that moved from one camp to another was treated as a potential turning point.
The politics of money
Yet perhaps the most disturbing dimension of the election was the continuing role of money.
Nigeria’s elections have increasingly become contests in which political mobilisation and financial inducement frequently overlap.
Osun 2026 was no exception.
Reports from the field indicated allegations of payments ranging from thousands of naira per voter, with some reports putting the figure at N30,000 in certain locations. Other reports cited amounts between N10,000 and N20,000.
These figures should be treated as reported allegations rather than proof that every voter or political actor participated in vote buying.
Nevertheless, the reports were widespread enough to become one of the defining issues of the election.
Civil society observers, including Yiaga Africa, raised serious concerns about voter inducement.
Yiaga’s post-election assessment was particularly revealing: it found that the official results accurately reflected ballots counted at polling units, but simultaneously warned that widespread reports of vote buying and voter inducement raised concerns about the integrity of voters’ choices. That distinction is crucial.
An election can be accurately counted and still be morally compromised if voters are induced before casting their ballots.
The challenge for Nigerian democracy is therefore no longer only whether votes are counted correctly.
It is whether voters are sufficiently free to make their choices without financial coercion.
But Osun voters were not simply commodities
Here lies one of the most fascinating dimensions of the election.
The people of Osun were not passive participants. They were political actors.
They knew what the politicians wanted.
They knew the value of their votes.
And, in some places, they reportedly collected money from competing political camps.
The phenomenon produced a disturbing but revealing paradox.
For decades, political elites have complained that voters sell their votes. But in many Nigerian communities, voters increasingly see election periods as one of the few moments when political elites come directly to them with resources.
That does not make vote buying acceptable.
But it reveals the deeper economic reality behind it.
A citizen struggling with inflation, unemployment and declining purchasing power may regard an election-day payment as immediate assistance, even while retaining the freedom—or determination—to vote according to personal preference. This helps explain why money does not always guarantee victory.
Money can buy access to voters. It cannot necessarily buy their loyalty.That may be one of the most important lessons of Osun 2026.
The resilience of the Osun voter
The most striking feature of the election was the resilience of the electorate.
Despite months of political tension, allegations of manipulation, fears of violence and the circulation of money, voters turned out to participate.
The state did not collapse into the kind of widespread violence that many had feared.
There were incidents. There were reports of vote buying.
There were allegations of intimidation and thuggery. There were technical difficulties.
There were even reports of tear gas and isolated disruptions.
The CLEEN Foundation reported BVAS failures, vote buying and a tear-gas incident, although it described the broader security environment as largely calm.
The EU-SDGN Election Observation Hub similarly reported incidents involving vote buying, thuggery and BVAS glitches while urging candidates and supporters to remain peaceful and pursue grievances through lawful channels.
But the larger story was that millions of registered voters and thousands of polling units completed the process.
Osun held.
That matters.
INEC: from polling units to the final declaration
Another important character in this drama was the Independent National Electoral Commission.
INEC entered the election under enormous pressure.
The commission had to manage thousands of polling units, deploy ad-hoc personnel, distribute sensitive materials, supervise accreditation, transmit results and conduct collation under intense political scrutiny.
More than 30,000 NYSC members were mobilised for the election process.
Technology was also central.
The IReV platform became an important instrument for public scrutiny as polling-unit results were uploaded.
By late Saturday night, more than 3,292 polling-unit results—87.48 per cent of the expected 3,763—had reportedly been uploaded. By Sunday morning, submissions had reached 3,701 polling units.
This represented an important evolution from the era when Nigerians had to rely almost entirely on physical collation centres and party agents for access to polling-unit results.
Technology did not eliminate suspicion.
It did, however, create another layer of visibility.
The suspense of collation
The night after voting was perhaps the most dramatic part of the election. As results trickled in from the 30 local government areas, the contest remained close enough to sustain political anxiety.
At one point, with results from 303 of the state’s 332 wards collated, Adeleke was already leading Oyebamiji. The remaining question was whether the APC could reverse the trajectory in the outstanding areas. It could not.
By Sunday morning, the mathematics had become decisive.
The final result was:
Accord — Ademola Adeleke: 511,067
APC — Bola Oyebamiji: 444,815
ADC — Najeem Salaam: 17,180
Adeleke won by 66,252 votes.
He also won 19 of the state’s 30 local government areas, according to the final collation reports. Then came the formal moment.
At the INEC State Collation Centre in Osogbo, the State Returning Officer, Professor Joshua Ogunwole, announced Adeleke as the winner.
The contest was over. At least electorally.
What the result really means
Adeleke’s victory is significant for several reasons.
First, it represents a personal political triumph.
The governor survived the collapse of the political platform under which he originally won office.
He survived defections. He survived an increasingly organised opposition. He survived the enormous symbolic weight of an election involving the ruling party at the federal level.
And he won a second term.
Second, it is a setback for the APC. The party entered the contest with enormous confidence.
Its candidate had substantial political backing.
The party had rebuilt its organisation.
Several powerful politicians had joined its ranks.
Yet it could not translate those advantages into victory.
The result therefore raises an important question ahead of Nigeria’s 2027 political cycle:
How far can federal political power travel before it encounters the independent preferences of state voters?
Osun may have provided one answer.
Tinubu’s unusual post-election message
Perhaps one of the most politically significant moments came after the result.
President Tinubu congratulated Adeleke on his victory and urged him to unite the people of Osun.
The President also commended INEC and the security agencies for what he described as the peaceful and transparent conduct of the election. That gesture is important.
Elections inevitably create winners and losers.
But democracy becomes stronger when political competition ends with an acceptance of the legitimacy of the electoral process—or, where disputes remain, when those disputes are pursued through institutions rather than violence.
The APC has indicated that it is studying the result and may explore constitutional avenues, meaning the legal chapter may not yet be completely closed.
That, too, is part of democracy.
The bigger lesson: Osun has changed
The 2026 election has altered the political equation in Osun. The state is no longer simply a two-party battlefield.
The PDP’s disappearance from the governorship ballot was itself historic.
Accord, a relatively minor national political platform, has now produced a two-term governor in Osun.
The APC remains a formidable force.
And the Adeleke political dynasty remains enormously influential. But perhaps the greatest force demonstrated by this election was neither Accord nor APC.
It was the voter.
The voter who listened to competing promises.
The voter who watched political defections.
The voter who witnessed allegations of vote buying. The voter who saw federal and state interests collide. The voter who endured the anxiety. And finally, the voter who entered the polling booth alone. That last act is where political power becomes democratic power.
Beyond Adeleke: the warning buried inside victory
Adeleke’s victory should not be interpreted as a licence for complacency. It is a mandate—but it is also a responsibility.
The governor now has four additional years in which to prove whether the confidence placed in him by the electorate was justified.
The opposition, meanwhile, must decide whether it will spend the next four years merely preparing for another election or rebuilding its relationship with ordinary Osun citizens.
INEC also has lessons to absorb.
The reported BVAS problems, vote-buying incidents and isolated security disruptions demonstrate that electoral credibility is not secured by technology alone.
It requires institutional independence, transparent procedures, effective enforcement and a political culture that respects voters.
And Nigeria itself must confront the most uncomfortable lesson. If elections continue to become auctions, democracy eventually becomes a marketplace rather than a system of representation.
The final verdict of Osun
In the end, Osun voters delivered a verdict.
They did not simply choose between Adeleke and Oyebamiji.
They chose between competing political narratives.
The APC said it could reclaim the state.
Adeleke said he could withstand the federal machine. The political class deployed its structures. Money circulated.
Defections reshaped alliances.
Campaigns became increasingly intense.
The electorate listened. Then the votes were counted. And the result was clear.
Ademola Adeleke won.
But perhaps the more profound victory belongs to the principle that, despite the money, the machinery, the rivalry and the turbulence, the final political authority still rested—at least in this election—with the people standing behind the ballot.
Osun 2026 has therefore left Nigeria with a compelling democratic lesson:
Political power may organise the battlefield. Money may influence the campaign. Federal authority may shape the atmosphere. Parties may mobilise their armies. But in a credible election, the voter still has the last word.
And in Osun, on August 15, 2026, that last word was Adeleke.
* Aliagan is an Abuja-based Journalist, the Managing Editor, Time Nigeria Magazine, he is also the President of Nigerian Guild of Investigative Journalists (NGIJ) as well as Political Analyst, he can be reached via: rryaliagan@gmail.com and 0803 4339 411.
