Postscript by Waziri Adio
Since 2014, Osun State has produced some of the most keenly contested governorship elections in the country. But the Osun election is closely monitored not just because of its competitive nature or because other Nigerians care that much about who is the governor of the state in the South West hinterland. It is largely because the Osun election has acquired the character of a potential bellwether. As the last off-cycle poll before the general election, the conduct and the outcome of the Osun governorship election are scoured by politicians, political analysts and election monitors for what they portend. Beyond this, the state is also an active site for proxy battles. Leading politicians whose names are not on the ballot, including those not even registered to vote in the state, have high stakes in what happens in Osun.
Osun governorship elections started taking on this outsized significance in the build-up to the landmark 2015 general election. The All Progressives Congress (APC) had emerged as a merger of the leading opposition parties in 2013, with a bridgehead in the South West as probably its most lethal threat to the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). However, the PDP secured a stunning upset in the 21st June 2014 governorship election in Ekiti State, winning in all the 16 local councils of Ekiti and securing close to 60% of the valid votes. Buoyed by this upset, PDP was keen on flipping the much bigger Osun State in the 9th August 2014 election.
Given the equally outsized role that governors can play in presidential elections, an upset in Osun would have been a major psychological blow to the emergent APC and a significant morale booster for the PDP ahead of the 2015 presidential election. So, a lot was riding on the Osun governorship election of that year, especially because of what had happened in Ekiti and also because Osun was the only southern state that the PDP presidential candidate, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan, had lost in the 2011 presidential election.
Mallam Nuhu Ribadu, the flagbearer of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in 2011, had polled 299, 711 votes in Osun (the only state he won) while Dr. Jonathan got 188, 409 votes. A repeat of the 2011 presidential results in 2015 would be unpalatable to PDP but savoury to APC. Both APC and PDP thus devoted significant attention and resources to getting over the line in the Osun governorship election of 2014. APC eventually won and handsomely too. Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, the incumbent but very vulnerable governor in that election, got a second term, the only Osun governor to have legally done so till date.
As Osun State goes to the poll to elect its next governor on 15th August 2026, the pattern that emerged in 2014 and got solidified in two subsequent electoral cycles in the state still looms large. There are 14 governorship candidates on the ballot in Osun this time around. But it is squaring up to be a three-way race. This is likely to increase the keenness of the contest and magnify the role of interested parties. The three leading candidates are: Senator Ademola Adeleke, the incumbent governor, of Accord (previously of PDP from where he officially decamped on 9th December 2025); Mr. Bola Oyebamiji of APC; and Dr. Najeem Salaam of the African Democratic Congress (ADC).
The three of them are formidable candidates in their own right. Apart from being the incumbent, Adeleke, from Ede North LGA, comes from an established political family (his late brother was a governor and a senator and their father was a senator in the Second Republic). Salaam was the speaker of the Osun State House of Assembly for two terms and is a major politician from Ejigbo in Ejigbo LGA, one of the most populous councils in the state. Oyebamiji, who is from Ikire in Irewole LGA, was a banker, head of a federal agency and finance commissioner in the state for five years. Incidentally, all three were together in APC at some point.
It is also noteworthy that all three are from Osun West senatorial district. Osun West has 10 local councils like each of Osun Central and Osun East and it boasts of major towns and vote centres like Iwo, Ede and Ejigbo. But Osun West has been roundly marginalised in governorship matters in Osun State in the Fourth Republic. Prior to 2022, Osun West had not produced a governor in the state. Chief Bisi Akande (four years), Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola (seven years) and Mr. Gboyega Oyetola (four years) are all from Osun Central while Aregbesola (eight years) is from Osun East. In 23 years, the governorship of the state was monopolised by Osun Central and Osun East while Osun West was totally frozen out.
Adeleke is the first governor produced by Osun West since 1999 (though his older brother, Senator Isiaka Adeleke, was a governor for less than two years in the truncated Third Republic). A major boost for the younger Adeleke in 2018 and 2022 was the strong agitation for the injustice to Osun West to be corrected, a point sorely missed by the APC in those elections but which all the parties seem to have grasped now. However, this micro-zoning to Osun West by the main parties may be to Adeleke’s advantage: the two other senatorial districts may prefer the Osun West person who would be term-barred in 2030 so that they can have a legitimate go again when no one can speak of continued marginalisation of Osun West. In a way, there is a subtle contest between Osun West and the other two senatorial districts in this election.
Ordinarily, elections should be about incumbents and their challengers. But the August 15 election is not strictly a contest between Adeleke and the other two leading candidates, despite their individual pedigree. It is primarily a contest between Adeleke and two other politicians who are not on the ballot but who are also from the state.
The first is Oyetola, governor of Osun State between 2018 and 2022 and the current Minister of Marine and Blue Economy. Adeleke and Oyetola ran against each other in 2018 and 2022. Initially declared inconclusive, the 2018 election was decided by a mere 482 votes, with Oyetola scoring 35.42% of the valid votes and Adeleke polling 35.35%, a remarkable photo finish. In 2022, Adeleke turned the table, getting 50% of the valid votes to Oyetola’s 47%. Both elections were bitterly fought and contested till the end, with claims of manipulation surviving even court rulings. The 2026 edition is thus a grudge match though by proxy for Oyetola. It is not hidden that Oyetola is Oyebamiji’s main sponsor and that Oyebamiji is his project. Oyebamiji was Oyetola’s finance commissioner (as he was Aregbesola’s too). He was also Oyetola’s special adviser as minister from where he was appointed to head the National Inland Waterways Authority (NIWA), an agency under Oyetola’s ministry.
The second contestant not on the ballot is Aregbesola, governor of Osun State between 2010 and 2018 and the current National Secretary of ADC. He may not have the same history that Oyetola has with Adeleke but he definitely has a point to prove. Osun is his base. He is in control of ADC in the state, has his own political structure and he is still a crowd puller. He needs to demonstrate to his ADC compatriots that he is not a spent force and that he can hurt President Bola Tinubu, whom he has had a bitter falling out with. It is not a secret that Salaam was his anointed even long before ADC’s primaries. So, his political stature rests on the outcome of this election. He is an interested party, though also by proxy. Interestingly, the Osun election is also a chance for Aregbesola and Oyetola to settle their own unfinished business. Oyetola was Aregbesola’s chief of staff and his successor in 2018 but they have had their own falling out too. It is not unlikely that they will be more interested in cutting each other to size than even in taking on the incumbent.
Other interested parties with high stakes in the Osun election are some other politicians contesting in the 2027 general election. Results of recent general elections in the state will show the reason for this unusual interest. In the 2019 general election, APC won two of three senatorial seats in Osun State, six of the nine seats in the House of Representatives and 23 of the 26 seats in the state’s House of Assembly. It was a totally different picture in 2023 when PDP snapped all three senatorial seats in the state, all nine seats in the House of Representatives, and 25 of 26 seats in the House of Assembly.
In one electoral cycle a party literally got wiped out by the previous opposition. What changed? There might be many local factors at play (as all politics remains local), but one significant thing is that PDP produced the governor who was elected on 16th July 2022 and sworn in 27th November 2022. This may be circumstantial, as Osun State has been a contested ground since 2003 when PDP upstaged the Alliance for Democracy (AD) in the state. But if a change in governor a mere three months to the general election could have even tangential effect on the electoral fortunes of the parties in the down ballot, then you can situate why there is so much riding on how Osun votes on Saturday.
But most significantly, two leading presidential candidates have serious stakes in the outcome of the election on Saturday. Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, the presidential candidate of ADC, won Osun State narrowly in 2023, polling 353,860 votes to Asiwaju Bola Tinubu’s 342, 941 votes. Atiku’s first wife, Mrs. Titi Abubakar, is from Osun State. Adeleke as PDP governor pulled his weight behind Atiku, the PDP presidential candidate. It is also suspected that some of Tinubu’s former allies did antiparty or protest votes. Still, this was a major upset for Tinubu because Osun, the heartland of Yorubaland, was deemed his stronghold. But Atiku had been serving notice in Osun for a while. In the 2019 election, he came close to edging out President Muhammadu Buhari in the state by scoring 47.21% of the votes to Buhari’s 48.64% (though the same Buhari had secured 59.69% to Jonathan’s 38.89% in the 2015 election).
In 2023, Atiku made good his Osun threat by beating Tinubu in his backyard. The number of votes or even the percentages do not fully reflect the extent of Atiku’s victory in Osun in 2023. He actually led in 20 of the 30 LGAs in the state, leaving Tinubu with the highest votes in only 10 LGAs or a third of the local councils in state. Atiku would crave a repeat in 2027, which will further fit into his apparent permutation of winning most of the northern votes while hoping that southern votes will be shared. He has Aregbesola, former governor of Osun State, now officially in his camp and will be interested in either ADC winning the state or at least APC not winning. Adeleke is now in Accord for tactical reason (as PDP has become a dead-end) and has even declared open support for Tinubu, likely for strategic reasons. But Atiku would hope he can work with Adeleke in case ADC does not win so as to earn his Osun encore.
However, this is precisely what Tinubu is likely to do all to prevent and why he and Atiku are contestants by proxy in Osun. Tinubu has a not-so-small point to settle with Atiku, his former ally, in Osun in 2027, and he is unlikely to just leave it to January when both of them will officially be on the ballot. Beyond the rematch, Tinubu also needs to do much better in the South West in 2027 than he did in 2023 for him to have a strong path to victory, given how some of his 2023 vote centres in the north might have been eroded. He needs to upturn the upsets in places like Osun while hoping to extend his lead in other parts of his home base. He thus has a major incentive to reclaim Osun for his party ahead of the general election. How Osun votes on Saturday may not matter eventually in the grand scheme of things in 2027, but the psychological effect of their parties not winning the Osun governorship election is higher for Tinubu than for Atiku.
This is probably feeding the apparent desperation of APC to win Osun State on Saturday. Federal might is being deployed possibly to checkmate and intimidate the ruling party in the state. Federation allocations to Osun LGAs are still being withheld. Recent arrests of Accord leaders by the police and the ill-timed freezing of one of the accounts of Osun State by the EFCC, now reversed by presidential instruction, fit the same frame. Combined, they serve as extra evidence for those who insist that Tinubu is all out to muzzle the opposition in the country and that democracy is in retreat in Nigeria.
This is one extra reason why Saturday’s election in Osun will be under intense scrutiny. And this is precisely why Tinubu should ensure that federal institutions are not used to advantage or disadvantage any of the parties and that the electoral umpire stays neutral and gives a good account of itself. An openly credible election in Osun State on Saturday will not eliminate all doubts. But at least it can reduce the weight of certain claims and lessen the heat as we head into the 2027 general election.