When Osun voters go to the polls on Saturday, August 15, they will not merely be choosing between two familiar political brands. They will be deciding whether to renew the mandate of an incumbent who won the state four years ago by 28,344 votes or hand power to an All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate whose campaign has spent months assembling a coalition around the promise of a different direction.
On the surface, the race has become a contest between Governor Ademola Adeleke of the Accord Party and APC candidate Bola Oyebamiji. But beneath the two-horse headline lies a more complicated three-way political arithmetic involving African Democratic Congress (ADC) candidate Najeem Salaam, changing party structures, old voting patterns, new alliances and an electorate that is considerably larger than the one that decided the 2022 election.
The numbers provide the first clue. In 2022, Adeleke, then the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) candidate, polled 403,371 votes, against 375,027 for the APC’s then-incumbent candidate, Gboyega Oyetola. Adeleke’s winning margin was therefore 28,344 votes. He won 17 of the state’s 30 local government areas, while APC won 13.
That margin was not built uniformly across Osun. The decisive advantage came from Osun West, where Adeleke polled 144,558 votes against Oyetola’s 116,860. That was a margin of 27,698 votes. In Osun Central, Adeleke had a much narrower advantage: 138,733 against Oyetola’s 136,294. In Osun East, Oyetola actually led, with 121,873 votes against Adeleke’s 120,080.
This is perhaps the most useful starting point for understanding Saturday’s election.The question is not simply whether Oyebamiji can beat Adeleke. It is whether he can alter the geographical arithmetic that produced Adeleke’s victory in 2022. And that is where the race gets interesting.
The Adeleke advantage: incumbency, infrastructure and the old PDP machine
Adeleke goes into the election with the obvious advantage of incumbency. He is not asking voters to imagine what he might do in office. He is asking them to judge what he has already done.
His campaign has placed infrastructure, workers’ welfare, healthcare, education, agriculture and grassroots development at the centre of its case for continuity. The administration says it has constructed or rehabilitated hundreds of kilometres of roads, invested in health facilities and education, paid salary and pension arrears and undertaken major infrastructure projects, including flyovers in Osogbo and Ile-Ife. These are campaign claims and should be assessed against independent budget and project evidence rather than accepted wholesale.
There is, however, another potentially important asset: the survival of the PDP’s grassroots structure behind him despite his defection to Accord. Adeleke left the PDP for Accord in December 2025 amid the national crisis in the PDP. But in March 2026, the Osun PDP formally adopted him and directed its structures from polling-unit level through wards and local governments to support his re-election under Accord.
That is significant. Adeleke is therefore running under a smaller party label but is not necessarily running without the political machinery that helped deliver his 2022 victory.There has also been institutional consolidation around his administration. The Speaker of the Osun House of Assembly, 24 other state legislators and six members of the House of Representatives elected on the PDP platform moved to Accord and endorsed Adeleke’s re-election. If those political movements translate into actual polling-unit mobilisation, they could give the incumbent a formidable organisational advantage.
But incumbency is also Adeleke’s vulnerability. An incumbent election is inevitably a referendum. The voter is no longer asking:”What can this candidate do?” The voter can ask: “What have you done for me?” This is especially important because an IPC opinion poll of more than 300 Osun respondents found that security and public safety ranked first among voter priorities at 37.1 per cent, followed by employment and economic growth at 27 per cent. Infrastructure was 10.8 per cent, education 9.5 per cent, youth empowerment 9.5 per cent and healthcare 6 per cent.
That creates an interesting test for the incumbent. Adeleke’s strongest campaign asset is performance.But performance is only electorally useful if voters consider the performance relevant to their priorities.
Oyebamiji’s opportunity: turn the election into a referendum on Adeleke
Bola Oyebamiji’s campaign is built around almost the opposite proposition. He is asking voters to treat the election as a choice between continuity and change; political popularity and managerial competence; personality and governance capacity. Oyebamiji has a substantial technocratic résumé: 28 years in banking, two terms as Osun Commissioner for Finance and a later stint as Managing Director of the National Inland Waterways Authority.
His campaign has therefore attempted to make competence and economic management central to the election. His seven-point agenda includes education, healthcare, agriculture, youth and women empowerment, wealth creation, industrialisation, transparency and accountability.
That message could resonate particularly well with an electorate whose second-biggest stated priority is employment and economic growth. But there is a problem.Competence on paper does not automatically translate into votes. Oyebamiji must turn his résumé into a compelling answer to the everyday questions of Osun voters: Where will the jobs come from? How will agriculture become profitable? How will small businesses survive? How will government revenue be generated? What will happen to education? What will happen to health? And perhaps most importantly: What will he do differently from the administration in which he previously served?
The Oyebamiji coalition is the biggest new variable This is where the 2026 election departs significantly from 2022. In the past week, two important political developments have strengthened the APC candidate’s coalition. Former Osun governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola and former deputy governor Iyiola Omisore publicly endorsed Oyebamiji. Oyinlola had supported Adeleke in 2022, making his current alignment particularly notable. Then the APGA governorship candidate, Adesina Adeyemi-Doro, withdrew from the race and endorsed Oyebamiji.
That endorsement should not, however, be mechanically interpreted as a transfer of APGA votes to APC. Premium Times correctly noted that a candidate’s withdrawal does not automatically transfer the supporters’ votes to another candidate. What it does provide is an additional political platform and potentially a broader coalition. This distinction is important. Political endorsements are not votes.
They become votes only when organisations, local leaders and voters actually mobilise behind them on election day.The Oyinlola factor is therefore more important politically than numerically. The former governor’s endorsement matters not simply because he has supporters, but because it signals a degree of political realignment. Oyinlola had backed Adeleke in 2022. He is now backing the candidate seeking to defeat him. Omisore’s alignment with Oyebamiji adds another experienced political operator to the APC coalition.
The APC has also brought national political weight into the final phase of the campaign, with its national leadership and governors joining the mobilisation effort in Osogbo. The question is whether these elite alliances can translate into the kind of polling-unit-level mobilisation that matters in Osun.
But Oyebamiji carries the baggage of the APC years
This may be the most difficult issue for the APC candidate. Oyebamiji served as Commissioner for Finance during the APC period before Adeleke defeated Oyetola in 2022. That history provides him with experience. But it also gives the opposition something to attack.
The Adeleke campaign has sought to associate Oyebamiji with the fiscal and salary controversies of the previous APC administration, including the infamous half-salary era and claims about accumulated debt and arrears. The APC and Oyebamiji’s supporters strongly dispute the negative characterisation of his record and point instead to his experience in revenue mobilisation and public financial management.
For Oyebamiji, this creates a paradox: the experience that makes him attractive as a technocrat is also the experience that exposes him to the record of the administration in which he served.
He must therefore convince voters that he is experienced without being captive to the past.
The forgotten third factor: Najeem Salaam
Although the election has increasingly been described as a two-horse race, it would be analytically dangerous to ignore Najeem Salaam.
The ADC candidate, a former Speaker of the Osun House of Assembly, is backed by former governor Rauf Aregbesola, whose political network remains significant in the state. Aregbesola has rejected reports of an ADC alliance with either major contender and insists that his party will contest the election independently.
That matters because the ADC potentially occupies the space of voters who are dissatisfied with the incumbent but are not prepared to return to the APC.
In other words, Salaam does not necessarily need to win to influence who wins. If he attracts enough anti-Adeleke votes, he could make Oyebamiji’s path easier, or, if he draws heavily from APC-leaning voters, make it harder. The third force is therefore less about its probability of outright victory than about where its votes come from.
The geography of the election may decide the argument
The 2022 numbers offer a remarkably clear map. Adeleke’s 28,344-vote victory was, in effect, an Osun West victory. He carried the district by 27,698 votes, while his advantage in Osun Central was only 2,439 votes. Oyetola, meanwhile, edged Adeleke by 1,793 votes in Osun East. Put differently, the two candidates were almost evenly matched outside Osun West. The question confronting the 2026 race is therefore whether Adeleke can reproduce that extraordinary West advantage and whether Oyebamiji can sufficiently change the arithmetic in Central and East to compensate for it.
This tells us something crucial. Adeleke’s victory was not built on overwhelming dominance across Osun. It was built overwhelmingly on Osun West, particularly his Ede base.
In 2022, he won Ede North by 23,931 to 9,603 and Ede South by 19,438 to 5,704. Together, those two LGAs produced an Adeleke advantage of more than 28,000 votes almost the entire statewide margin. That makes Ede extraordinarily important. If Adeleke retains that advantage, Oyebamiji must find votes elsewhere. If Oyebamiji significantly narrows the Ede gap while improving APC’s performance in Osun Central and East, the mathematics becomes much tighter.
This is why the battle for Osogbo, Olorunda, Ile-Ife, Ilesa and other competitive councils may matter disproportionately. Recent reporting has identified 10 battleground LGAs where the three leading candidates could make significant gains.
Then there is the turnout question
This may ultimately be more important than all the endorsements. Osun had 1,954,800 registered voters in the 2023 electoral cycle. The final 2026 register contains 2,339,233 voters, including 395,995 newly registered voters during the 2025/26 CVR exercise.
That is an increase of approximately 384,433 registered voters—about 19.7 per cent compared with the 2023 register. But registration is not voting. In the 2022 governorship election, turnout was only 42.09 per cent, according to Dataphyte’s analysis of Osun’s electoral history.
If turnout remains low, the election could again be determined by a relatively small proportion of registered voters. And that makes mobilisation crucial. The IPC poll offers an intriguing counterpoint: 85 per cent of its respondents said they were ready to vote, despite concerns about political violence.
Whether that expressed intention translates into actual turnout on Saturday is one of the biggest unanswered questions.
Security could become an electoral variable
The election is taking place amid unusually high political tension. Civil society organisations have raised concerns about political killings, intimidation and vote buying. CISLAC has warned that violence and electoral malpractice could undermine the credibility of the poll.
The police have announced the deployment of about 15,000 personnel for the election, with additional senior officers and specialised units assigned to the state.
Security is particularly important because it can affect not only the safety of voters but who actually turns out to vote. A voter who fears violence may stay home. A community that feels intimidated may record depressed turnout. And in a close election, turnout suppression in the wrong places can change the result without changing anyone’s underlying political preference.
The economy may matter more than the campaigns suggest
There is an interesting disconnect between what citizens say they want and what political actors have often emphasised. The IPC poll found that security/public safety (37.1 per cent) and employment/economic growth (27 per cent) were the two most important priorities among respondents.
Yet much of the campaign discourse has been dominated by defections, endorsements, allegations and counter-allegations, political alliances, personality politics and the increasingly intense battle over who controls the state’s political structures. This raises a fundamental question: are the candidates actually campaigning on the issues that voters say matter most to them?
For Adeleke, the central argument is essentially a call to voters to judge him by what he has done in office. Oyebamiji, on the other hand, is asking voters to judge him by his competence, experience and what he can do differently. Ultimately, the electorate will decide which of these competing arguments and, more importantly, which vision of governance speaks more convincingly to their priorities.
If the question is who has the stronger starting position going into Saturday’s election, the advantage appears to lie with Adeleke. As the incumbent, he enters the contest with the benefit of having an established record in office and the electoral base that delivered his victory in 2022. His particularly strong performance in Ede and across parts of Osun West remains an important part of that foundation. He also retains the support of the Osun PDP structure despite contesting the election under the Accord platform, following the party’s decision to back his re-election.
Adeleke has also been able to consolidate significant political support around his candidacy, with several legislators and political actors moving from the PDP into Accord alongside him.Beyond the political structure, the incumbent can point to visible infrastructure projects and social interventions as evidence of his performance in office. His challenge, however, is to persuade voters that these achievements correspond with their most pressing needs and are sufficient grounds for another term.
If, however, the question is who appears to have greater momentum for changing the electoral equation of 2022, the answer may be Oyebamiji. He has the advantage of contesting on the platform of the APC, the party that remains a formidable political force in the state, as well as a technocratic profile built around his experience in public finance and administration. He also has the machinery and national visibility of a major political party behind him.
More significantly, Oyebamiji has succeeded in attracting several influential political figures into his camp. Former governor Olagunsoye Oyinlola and former deputy governor Iyiola Omisore have endorsed his candidacy, while the APGA governorship candidate has also withdrawn from the race and backed him. These developments suggest an attempt to build a coalition that extends beyond the APC’s traditional political base.
The critical question, however, is whether political endorsements, elite alliances and organisational advantages can be converted into actual votes at the polling units. That is where the strength of Oyebamiji’s coalition will ultimately be tested. In the same way, Adeleke’s incumbency and political structure will matter only to the extent that they translate into turnout and votes on Saturday. The election, therefore, may come down less to the number of prominent names supporting either candidate than to which side can convert its political assets into a sufficiently broad and effectively mobilised electorate.
So, who has the edge?
The election may ultimately turn on five critical questions. The first is whether Adeleke can reproduce the advantage he enjoyed in Osun West in 2022. If he retains the overwhelming support he secured in Ede and the wider district, the incumbent would begin the contest with a significant electoral cushion. The second is whether Oyebamiji can substantially improve the APC’s performance in Osun Central and Osun East. Even relatively small gains spread across several competitive and populous local government areas could help compensate for Adeleke’s traditional strength in the West.
A third question concerns the impact of Najeem Salaam and the ADC. Where Salaam’s votes come from could be as important as how many votes he eventually secures. If the ADC attracts predominantly voters opposed to Adeleke, it could divide the opposition vote and potentially work to the incumbent’s advantage. Conversely, if a significant proportion of its support comes from voters who would otherwise have supported the APC, it could complicate Oyebamiji’s route to victory.
The fourth question is whether the large number of new voters will actually turn out to vote. Nearly 400,000 new registrations have expanded the size of the electorate, but the relatively low turnout recorded in 2022 is a reminder that the number of registered voters does not necessarily translate into the number of people who will eventually cast their ballots. The ability of the parties to mobilise these new voters, particularly in competitive areas, could therefore have a significant bearing on the outcome.
But perhaps the deepest question is what voters ultimately make the election about: performance or change? Adeleke wants Saturday’s poll to become a referendum on his record in office, asking voters to judge him by what he has achieved during his first term. Oyebamiji, on the other hand, wants it to become a referendum on the incumbent’s shortcomings and an argument for a change of direction. In the end, the candidate who succeeds in defining the election around the question that matters most to voters may have the crucial advantage.
It is a race too close for political certainty.
Rasheed Adebiyi, a Political Communication Strategist, is an Associate Professor of Mass Communication, Fountain University, Osogbo