By Paul Dada
It was expected to be a titanic battle. And so it was. It was predicted to be a two-horse race. And so it was.
The 2026 Osun governorship election was a fierce battle between Governor Ademola Adeleke of the Accord Party and the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Bola Oyebamiji. Forget about the other 11 candidates. They had no weight to pull. They were no real contenders. Call them pretenders and you will not be wrong.
In that contest, Adeleke emerged with a considerably stronger mandate, winning a second term and widening the gap between himself and the APC.
At the time the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared the result on August 16, Adeleke had polled 511,067 votes against Oyebamiji’s 444,815, giving the incumbent a winning margin of 66,252 votes. Adeleke also won 19 of the state’s 30 local government areas, while Oyebamiji secured 11.
There is something about the figures. They tell an important story. Adeleke did not merely retain power. There was a substantial improvement on his 2022 performance. Four years ago, he defeated the then incumbent, Gboyega Oyetola, by 28,344 votes. In 2026, his margin more than doubled to 66,252 votes. His personal vote total also rose from 403,371 in 2022 to 511,067. This was an increase of 107,696 votes.
Incumbency and the power of performance
Inarguably, one of Adeleke’s biggest advantages was incumbency. Unlike in 2022, when he was challenging an APC government, he went into this election asking voters to judge what he had done in office.
In his campaign he repeatedly pointed to projects and policies in infrastructure, education, healthcare, agriculture and workers’ welfare. Adeleke framed the election as a referendum on his administration, while the opposition sought to convince voters that his record had been overstated.
That strategy appears to have worked for the governor. After his victory, he said voters had effectively told him that his administration had delivered “dividends of democracy in terms of agriculture, infrastructure, improving our education and so forth”.
In that context, the election became more than a contest between two personalities. It also became a choice between continuity and change, with Adeleke successfully persuading a larger section of the electorate to stay with his administration.
The Ede factor
Adeleke’s traditional stronghold remained central to his victory. Ede North and Ede South produced some of the largest margins of the election.
In Ede North, Adeleke scored 35,427 votes against Oyebamiji’s 10,283. In Ede South, the governor secured 26,188 votes while his opponent managed only 6,219. Those figures gave Adeleke a formidable cushion before the results from other parts of the state were added.
However, he did not rely solely on his home base. He won 19 local government areas, including Osogbo, Ife East, Ife Central, Ife North, Ilesa West, Iwo, Ila, Ifelodun and Ejigbo.
His triumph in Osogbo was particularly significant. The state capital gave Adeleke 36,480 votes against Oyebamiji’s 30,474. It demonstrated that the governor was able to compete strongly outside his immediate political base.
APC’s strongholds were not enough
But no one can dismiss Oyebamiji as a weak opponent. He actually improved on the APC’s 2022 performance, taking the party’s vote from 375,027 under Oyetola to 444,815.
He also won 11 local government areas, including Irewole, where he scored 29,972 votes against Adeleke’s 10,934, and Boripe, where he secured 19,963 against the governor’s 12,448.
The real problem for the APC was that its victories were not sufficient to offset Adeleke’s margins elsewhere.
This appeared to be the defining feature of the election. Oyebamiji won several areas convincingly, but Adeleke accumulated enough votes in his strongholds and competitive areas to create a statewide lead that proved difficult to overturn.
A larger electorate worked in Adeleke’s favour
The election also took place against the backdrop of a much larger electorate. This was a big boost to the winner and the runner-up.
Registered voters increased from 1,952,387 in 2022 to 2,339,544 in 2026, while accredited voters rose from 827,218 to 1,010,684. Total votes cast increased from 823,124 to 1,005,800.
Both major candidates benefited from the larger pool. But Adeleke converted the expanded electorate into a bigger numerical advantage. His vote total increased by more than 100,000, compared with an increase of about 69,800 for the APC.
That difference mattered.
While it is true that the APC remained a powerful force in Osun, its increased vote haul was not sufficient to close the gap with the incumbent. Indeed, while the APC’s share of valid votes fell from 46.63 per cent in 2022 to 45.17 per cent in 2026, Adeleke’s share rose from 50.13 per cent to 51.90 per cent.
The party equation
Another important dimension was Adeleke’s decision to contest under the Accord Party rather than the PDP, the platform on which he won in 2022.
On the surface, the move may have looked politically risky. But the election demonstrated that Adeleke’s personal political structure was stronger than his dependence on the PDP label.
He succeeded at mobilising voters under a different party banner and defeated the APC, which controlled the Federal Government and had presented Oyebamiji as its candidate.
That makes his victory particularly significant. Adeleke showed that his political appeal could travel beyond the party platform that first took him to the Government House in Osogbo.
Oyebamiji’s difficult assignment
Oyebamiji entered the race with hopes as he had considerable political machinery behind him. The APC had planned to reclaim Osun after losing the governorship in 2022.
Oyebamiji worked to present himself as an experienced administrator with knowledge of the state’s finances and public service. During the campaign, he expressed a will to transform the state’s economy, expand mechanised agriculture and distribute government attention more evenly across the local government areas.
But the election eventually looked more like a referendum on the incumbent rather than simply a contest over Oyebamiji’s promises.
The challenge of the APC candidate was compounded by the fact that Adeleke had already built four years of personal relationships, political networks and visibility across the state. Oyebamiji needed to convince voters to remove a sitting governor who had already secured their votes once.
Well, he came close in several areas, but not close enough statewide.
The numbers that settled the battle
Ultimately, the election was decided by clear arithmetic.
Adeleke won 19 LGAs to Oyebamiji’s 11. He polled 511,067 votes to Oyebamiji’s 444,815. The difference was 66,252 votes.
This margin was more than twice the 28,344 votes by which Adeleke defeated Oyetola in 2022. In percentage terms, the gap between the two leading candidates increased from about 3.52 percentage points in 2022 to 6.93 percentage points in 2026.
The verdict was therefore loud. Oyebamiji succeeded in making the contest competitive, but Adeleke succeeded in making it decisive.
Adeleke can boldly say without fear of any controversy that the election was a validation of incumbency, his political network and the campaign built around his record. For Oyebamiji and the APC, it could be a reminder that controlling political structures at the national level does not automatically translate into victory at state level.
The Osun electorate surely had the final word, and on August 15, it chose continuity.
