Governor Ademola Adeleke has secured a second term in office after defeating his closest challenger, Bola Oyebamiji of the All Progressives Congress (APC), in Saturday’s Osun State governorship election.
The Returning Officer, Joshua Ogunwole, announced early Sunday at the INEC Collation Centre in Osogbo that Adeleke polled 511,067 votes to Oyebamiji’s 444,815. Najeem Salaam of the African Democratic Congress trailed in third with 17,180 votes.
“Adeleke Ademola Jackson of the Accord Party, having satisfied the requirement of the law, is hereby declared the winner and is hereby returned elected,” Ogunwole said. INEC recorded 1,010,684 accredited voters, with 1,005,800 votes cast and 985,079 deemed valid across the state’s 30 local government areas. Fifteen political parties took part in the contest.
Adeleke’s win is notable because he ran on the platform of the Accord Party, having decamped from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) — under which he won his first term — in December. He cited the party’s welfarist philosophy as his reason for switching.The election followed a tense campaign period marked by mutual accusations of violence between the ruling party and the APC.
Police deployed 15,000 personnel, 30 commissioners of police, a helicopter, and a drone unit to secure the state. President Bola Tinubu had directed the Inspector-General of Police and other security chiefs to guarantee a transparent, disruption-free process. Days before the poll, the EFCC froze an Osun State Government account, a move Tinubu ordered reversed, calling its timing “embarrassing.”
Separately, a last-minute court order added the Social Democratic Party to the ballot, forcing INEC to reprint and redistribute materials within 36 hours.
