Osun Decides: Adeleke Beats APC’s Oyebamiji to Retain Governor’s Seat

Ademola Adeleke, singer Davido’s uncle, has been declared the winner of the 2026 Osun State governorship election, securing a second term in office after a tightly fought contest against the candidate of the All Progressives Congress, Bola Oyebamiji.

The Independent National Electoral Commission announced the result in the early hours of Sunday, with the returning officer, Professor Joshua Olalekan Ogunwole, who also serves as Vice Chancellor of the Federal University, Oye-Ekiti, presiding over the collation.

Ogunwole certified that Adeleke, running on the platform of the Accord Party, polled 511,067 votes to defeat Oyebamiji, who garnered 444,815 votes. Najeem Salaam of the African Democratic Congress finished third with 17,180 votes.

The election, held on Saturday, August 15, was conducted across Osun’s 30 local government areas and 332 wards. INEC said 1,005,800 votes were cast in total, of which 985,079 were valid and 20,721 were rejected. According to figures reported by INEC, Adeleke’s tally represented roughly 50.8 percent of the vote, with Oyebamiji taking about 44.2 percent and the remaining thirteen candidates on the ballot sharing the rest.

The commission had recorded 2,339,233 registered voters in the state ahead of the poll, the highest number in Osun’s electoral history, with about 81.5 percent of registered voters having collected their permanent voter cards.

Fifteen political parties fielded candidates, though the contest was widely seen as a three-way race between Adeleke, Oyebamiji and Salaam. The Peoples Democratic Party, under whose banner Adeleke won his first term in 2022, did not field a candidate this time, as he moved to the Accord Party. The victory marks the first time the Accord Party has won the Osun governorship.

The campaign leading up to the election was marked by tension. There were allegations of vote buying, with reports that agents of the APC and Accord Party offered voters sums of money in some areas, and reports of violence linked to the election that resulted in fatalities in parts of the state. Some observers also reported malfunctions of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System at various polling units, which caused delays in accreditation and voting in some locations.

In the days before the vote, Adeleke accused former governor and current Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, Gboyega Oyetola, of working to manipulate the outcome.

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar and former Osun governor Rauf Aregbesola had campaigned in support of the ADC’s Salaam. As collation got underway, Oyebamiji issued a public warning against any attempt to subvert the outcome of the election, urging his supporters to remain calm while insisting that the votes cast be protected through to the final declaration.

Adeleke first became governor in 2022, when he defeated then-incumbent Oyetola of the APC on the PDP platform. That result was briefly overturned by an election tribunal in early 2023 before Adeleke went on to retain office through further litigation.

With Sunday’s declaration, Adeleke now returns for a second term, though as with the 2022 contest, any formal challenge to the result would be expected to proceed through Nigeria’s election petition tribunal system. No such challenge has been confirmed as of this writing.