By Bola BOLAWOLE
turnpot@gmail.com 0807 552 5533, 0803 251 0193
(Published in TREASURES column on the back page of the New Telegraph newspaper edition of Wednesday, 19 August 2026).
The Osun state governorship election, held on Saturday, 15 August, 2026, may have come and gone but its reverberations continue. Incumbent Gov. Ademola Nurudeen Jackson Adeleke of the Accord Party trounced his main challenger and candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Oyebamiji. The margin was convincing: 511, 067 to 444,815. Adeleke won in 19 local governments while Oyebamiji won in 11. The 13 other candidates – “the also-ran” – made no impact in the election.
Some had thought the victory of the Ekiti Oyebanji (Biodun) in the Ekiti state governorship election held two months earlier (Saturday, June 20, 2026) will also signal the victory of Osun’s Oyebamiji (Bola) last Saturday – moreso when both belonged to the same APC – but they were sorely disappointed. Name and party were where the similarities ended.
The Osun election left gaping holes in the popularity of some leading Osun politicians. Former Gov. Rauf Aregbesola’s party, ADC, and candidate, Najeem Salaam, came a miserable third with 17,180 votes. It would have been better had ADC not contested, so that Ogbeni Aregbe, as he is called, could continue to amuse himself that he still remains a power broker in Osun politics. As the interim National Secretary of ADC, its engine room, the Osun election deflated Aregbe. The swagger of the ex-Minister of the Interior under former President Muhammadu Buhari should be gone after this election.
So also will ex-Gov. Olagunsoye Oyinlola rue what evil genie had him, making him to shift alliances mid-air from the winning to the losing team at the 11th hour, despite that he was highly honoured and greatly respected by Gov. Adeleke. Did he return – or will he now return – the gift of a massive SUV that social media recorded Gov. Adeleke as handing over to him before the election?
Another politician whose electoral value has been affected one way or another is Dr. (Engr.) Iyiola Omisore, ex-deputy governor of the state, ex-Senator, and one-time National Secretary of the ruling APC, who is widely regarded as “the strongman of Ife politics.” Omisore has repeatedly sought the Osun governor’s seat, after he was cheated out of it at the start of this Fourth Republic in 1999. In the last election, he was again muscled out, forced to step down for Oyebamiji, aka AMBO (I am coming) who has now failed to arrive!
What role did Omisore play in AMBO’s defeat? Some said Accord and Adeleke carried the day in Ife because Omisore was not happy with the way he was shoved aside from contesting the APC primaries; as such, he did not work whole-heartedly for his party to win in his Ife strongholds. Others said he, too, was demystified by the Adeleke hurricane that swept many other established principalities and powers of Osun politics off their feet and off their seat.
Whichever is the case, many established politicians in Osun state will have to return to the drawing board to map out new strategies if the last election will not permanently bury them politically. If future elections in the state – Local Government, House of Assembly and National Assembly – follow the usual bandwagon effect witnessed all over the country, then, the days of many a-politician not aligned with Gov. Adeleke are numbered.
What is the prognosis for the 2027 General Elections? The ground has shifted from under the feet of some politicians. In 2023, Gov. Adeleke, then in the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), won the state for Abubakar Atiku; but it is unlikely if Atiku, who is still running in 2027, can bank on Osun votes this time around. Adeleke has pledged his support for the incumbent, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. So, Adeleke/Accord combined with APC means that Osun could be a Tinubu fortress in 2027.
The significance of this is more than that of a candidate winning in a state: Osun is the president’s home state; he lost there in the last election; but now, it is unlikely that Atiku can muster 25% votes in the state. We saw a similar pattern earlier in Ekiti state where Atiku and Peter Obi, the country’s two leading opposition politicians, were virtually absent in the governorship election there. So, ceteris paribu, that is two up for Tinubu and two down for Atiku and Obi. Let the social media political pundits take note!
Now to the election proper! All the demons that habitually plague elections here reared their ugly heads in the Osun 2026 governorship election. Pre-election tensions and fever, pre-election violence, vote-selling and vote-buying, weaponization of poverty, militarization of elections, grudge war taken too far, voter apathy or multiple registration of voters – name it! Not less than 34 violent attacks were reported in the state, resulting in not less than 18 reported fatalities.
At the height of the ethnic cleansing in Rwanda, an international magazine carried this quote on its front page: “There are no demons left in Hell! They have all gone to Rwanda!” It’s like all the demons in Hell shifted base and emptied themselves into Osun state during the last election, with a sitting senator even commanding his party loyalists to kill members of an opposing party!
There are positives all the same. The two leading parties gave the election their all. The Adelekes mobilized all the resources at their disposal, with Davido not taking the back seat. APC bigwigs saturated Osun with their presence and leveraged everything at their disposal to snatch victory for their party. But, unfortunately for them, Tinubu’s strategy of “grab it, snatch it, and run with it” did not work in, of all places, Tinubu’s own place of origin! True, then, is the biblical saying that a man’s enemies are the members of his own household!
The turnout in the 2026 Osun election was also far better than those of 2018 and 2022. In 2018, 1,682, 495 million registered out of which 769,500 voted. In 2022, 1,955,657 million registered but only 823,124 voted while Osun paraded 2,339,233 million registered voters this year, out of which 1,005,800 voted. These figures indicate that, holistically, either there was multiple registration or there was voter apathy, which is not good for the health of our democracy.
Factors that propelled numerically increased voter participation this time around include public perception of Adeleke as the underdog who was about to be skinned alive by those in control of Federal might. Public sympathy usually lines up behind perceived underdogs. The terrible times that Osun people, especially workers, pensioners, and artisans, were pushed through under APC’s Gov. Rauf Aregbesola and his successor, Gboyega Oyetola (now Minister of Marine and Blue Economy as well as the advertised nephew of President Tinubu) still haunt the people and they bayed for blood, like Shylock in William Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice” who insisted on having his pound of flesh or nothing. Adeleke’s modest achievements as governor and his accessibility and lack of airs also endeared the “dancing governor” to his people.
AMBO and APC lost the election because of the multidimensional havoc Aregbesola’s eight ruinous years had visited on Osun people. The 2018 governorship election which Adeleke purportedly lost to Oyetola with 482 votes was widely believed to have been rigged through a nebulous “inconclusive election” strategy. Conversely, Adeleke has won two subsequent elections convincingly.
Aregbesola’s exit from Osun APC left the party fragmented. To make matters worse, a vindictive Oyetola failed to heal the party he took over from Aregbe but reportedly cornered all state and Federal largesse for his “IleriOluwa” faction of the party, leaving many party wigs frustrated, stranded, estranged and disgruntled. By the time President Tinubu called for fence-mending, it came too little, too late! And understandably so!
Tinubu has nothing to lose, regardless who wins in Osun. Adeleke had wanted to defect to APC from PDP but Osun APC henchmen reportedly blocked the move, assuring the president that the Adelekes, being clever by half; were only trying to run away from imminent defeat and disgrace at the polls. With the APC door slammed in their face, the Adelekes deftly brokered an agreement with Tinubu, a master political strategist himself: Win or lose in the governorship election, we are for you – but allow a level-playing ground!
Fair enough! So the president holds the yam and also holds the knife. Our people say when the king’s goat eats the king’s yam, it is a win-win situation for the king! So, in the last Osun state governorship election, head or tail, Tinubu won!
In all of this, however, the losers are the intellectual class. Have you noticed that the ones who mostly fill elective offices these days are not the men and women of ideas and intellect? Afterwards, university professors are hired as INEC chairmen and they, in turn, hire their fellow professors as election returning officers to legitimize the infractions of a decadent ruling class and deodorise their odiferous malfeasance! Is there anything more disheartening in our current dispensation than this?
I didn’t know shoes now cost a fortune!
I actually don’t celebrate birthdays, but my family and church always insist. Last week with a new “agbada” lace material provided by the Excellent Men’s group in the church already sewn, I visited Ikeja Mall (Shoprite) to get myself a pair of shoes to match. I hadn’t bought shoes for years; thanks to my one-time landlord, Mr. Tolu Seosan (God bless his soul!), who had taught me how to maintain shoes. The last time I bought shoes at the same Shoprite, the costs ranged between N30,000 and N75,000; so I had thought that with N140/150 thousands, I would get a good pair of Italian shoes.
To my consternation, the first shoe I pointed at was N550,000! They must be joking! I pointed at another: N890,000! Ordinary shoes! What my Yoruba people call “i-te’le” – something you wear just to march the ground! Only Made-in-Turkey shoes were in the range of N300,000/400,000! I beat a quick retreat!
But thank God for His mercies! One of the gifts I received from a church member was a pair of home-made shoes! Isn’t God faithful unto His own? Italian or home-made, shoes na shoes; no be so? Is it not just to march the ground?
* Former editor of PUNCH newspapers, Chairman of its Editorial Board and Deputy Editor-in-chief, BOLAWOLE was also the Managing Director/Editor-in-chief of The Westerner news magazine. He writes the ON THE LORD’S DAY column in the Sunday Tribune and TREASURES column in New Telegraph newspaper on Wednesdays. He is also a public affairs analyst on radio and television.
