How Adeleke thwarted APC’s bid to reclaim Osun

The defeat of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Osun State’s 15 August governorship election was more than another change in the state’s political map. It marked the failure of the party’s attempt to return to the Government House four years after its candidate, Gboyega Oyetola, lost the seat to Ademola Adeleke in the 2022 election.

For Mr Adeleke, the victory was the culmination of a political journey that began less than a decade ago and was shaped by a powerful family name, an upset senatorial victory, a bitterly contested governorship election, a year of litigation over credibility of the 2018 election and, eventually, two successful bids for the state’s highest political office.

In the 15 August governorship election, Mr Adeleke, the Accord Party candidate, defeated his closest challenger, Bola Oyebamiji of the APC, to secure another four-year term. Mr Adeleke polled 511,067 votes against Mr Oyebamiji’s 444,815, according to the results declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).

The governor was presented a certificate of return on Wednesday in Osogbo by INEC National Commissioner representing the South-west, Kunle Ajayi. At the event, Mr Adeleke announced plans to establish a N500 million endowment fund for victims of election-related violence.

However, the victory has taken Mr Adeleke from a politician whose emergence was initially closely associated with the influential Adeleke family to an incumbent governor whom Osun voters have chosen to retain.

But that victory also fits into a broader pattern in Osun politics, where incumbency and party structures have repeatedly failed to guarantee political survival.

From family influence to political contender

Mr Adeleke did not enter Osun politics from an ordinary political background. He is the younger brother of Isiaka Adeleke, Osun’s first civilian governor and later a senator representing Osun West. Their father, the late patriarch of the Adeleke family, Ayoola Adeleke, served as a Nigerian senator during the Second Republic (1979–1983), representing the old Oyo State Senatorial District. The Adeleke family has since remained influential in the state’s political and social landscape.

Mr Adeleke’s political breakthrough came in 2017, following the death of his brother, which created a vacancy in the Osun West senatorial district.

To join the contest, he had initially sought the APC ticket but defected to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) after failing to secure the ruling party’s nomination. He subsequently contested the July 2017 senatorial by-election on the PDP platform.

The election outcome immediately established him as a political force to reckon with. He polled 97,480 votes to defeat APC candidate Mudashiru Hussein, who secured 66,116 votes, winning nine of the 10 local government areas in the senatorial district.

The victory was particularly significant because the APC controlled the state government under Governor Rauf Aregbesola at the time. It showed that the Adeleke name could still translate into electoral support decades after the family first left its footprints on the political landscape of the state.

Mr Adeleke soon turned that momentum towards the big prize: the Osun governorship.

Osun voters and the want of changing governments

Mr Adeleke’s rise cannot be fully understood without examining Osun’s electoral history.

Since the return to democratic rule in 1999, the state has moved between political parties and administrations, producing one of the most competitive electoral landscapes in the South-west.

Bisi Akande of the Alliance for Democracy governed the state from 1999 to 2003 before Olagunsoye Oyinlola of the PDP defeated him in the 2003 governorship election. Mr Oyinlola subsequently secured a second term in 2007.

But Mr Oyinlola’s second term was cut short by a prolonged legal battle. Rauf Aregbesola of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) – one of the legacy parties of today’s APC – who had lost the 2007 election, challenged the result in court. The Court of Appeal in 2010 declared him the rightful winner, overturning the earlier result.

The 2010 ruling fundamentally altered Osun’s electoral calendar, making it one of the Nigerian states where governorship elections are held off-cycle. During Mr Aregbesola’s first term, PDP was the ruling political party at the federal level under former president Goodluck Jonathan.

Mr Aregbesola subsequently won a fresh mandate for a second term in 2014 after his party, ACN, merged with other political parties in 2013 to form the APC, and governed the state until 2018, when his party’s candidate, Gboyega Oyetola, succeeded him after defeating his closest challenger Mr Adeleke of the PDP by a razor-thin margin.

Before Mr Oyetola was declared winner, the September 2018 governorship election was first pronounced “inconclusive” after the 353-vote margin separating Mr Adeleke and Mr Oyetola was lower than the 3,498 votes cancelled across seven polling units. Mr Adeleke had polled 254,698 votes, narrowly ahead of Mr Oyetola of the APC, who scored 254,345.

The supplementary rerun election held on 27 September, 2018, however, swung the contest in Mr Oyetola’s favour, leading to his declaration as winner. Mr Adeleke and the PDP challenged the result through the courts, but after a prolonged legal battle, the Supreme Court delivered the final verdict and affirmed Mr Oyetola’s victory.

Mr Oyetola’s tenure, however, lasted only one term after voters returned power to the PDP and elected Mr Adeleke in 2022. He defeated Mr Oyetola, then the incumbent, in a rematch that marked a decisive shift in the state’s political direction.

The pattern is significant: Osun voters have repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to change political control of the state. Sometimes that change has happened at the ballot box; in Aregbesola’s case, it followed a successful legal challenge to an election result and then by a ballot for his second term.

The next test for Adeleke

Once again, Mr Adeleke’s re-election has truncated the APC’s immediate attempt to reclaim Osun, but it has also created a new political obligation for the governor.

His first term was defined by visible infrastructure projects, interventions in workers’ welfare, debt reduction and increased revenue mobilisation, but also by unresolved questions over education spending, healthcare sustainability, local government administration and the completion and quality of some major projects.

There were concerns raised about lopsidedness of projects favouring his Ede axis of the state and proclivity to award government appointments to relatives.

The second term will therefore be judged less by campaign promises and more by whether the administration can convert its first-term interventions into lasting improvements and be fairer in its distribution of projects and appointments.

‘Osun election was a demonstration of people’s power’

Prince Gutap, an election expert at Yiaga Africa and its consultant on democracy, said the outcome of the Osun election should also be understood as the willingness of voters to assert their choice at the ballot box.

He said the people’s active participation was one of the clearest lessons from the election, particularly their determination to ensure that their votes counted.

Although Mr Gutap cautioned against using Osun’s experience as a direct template for the entire country, noting that voter participation differs across Nigeria’s regions. But he said the state offers an important example of how an engaged electorate can shape political outcomes.

“The willingness of voters to participate actively in the election was to ensure that their choice at the poll determines who governs them. And that is an important element of democratic development,” he said.

He pointed to an incident during the election in which citizens alerted the police after allegedly identifying a man they suspected was attempting to buy votes. According to him, police responded and arrested the individual.

“That’s the level of trust we want to have in our security agencies, that when we see a problem or when we see an issue, we can be able to walk to them and tell them, ‘There’s a problem here,’ and then they will quickly respond to it,” Mr Gutap said.

He noted that Osun State’s political history shows that voters can reward incumbents, but they can also withdraw that support when they decide to change direction.

“We have seen how voters have voted out incumbent governors at some points and, at other times, re-elected governors. What that tells us is that voters respond to leaders who address their problems and improve their welfare,” Mr Gutap added.

Also, public affairs journalist and analyst, Dayo Akintobi, expressed that the outcome of the recently concluded Osun’s governorship election demonstrated the growing power of Osun voters to determine electoral outcomes.

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Speaking on Channels Television, Mr Akintobi said the outcome reflected the will of voters who remained engaged throughout the electoral process, despite concerns over violence, intimidation and alleged vote-buying ahead of the election.

According to him, voters’ determination to protect their ballots made it difficult for any political or institutional force to subvert their choice.

“What happened in Osun was what we call people power. People’s power showed its capabilities, and nobody rested on their laurels and allowed themselves to be trampled over by juggernauts, by political opposition, by even federal might,” he said.

The analyst also pointed to the reported prevalence of vote-buying during the election, arguing that if voters collected money but still voted according to their conscience, politicians could eventually begin to question the value of spending huge sums to influence voters.