By Abiola Olatunde Aloba
Sometimes, the greatest political mistake is not losing an election. It is refusing victory when victory comes knocking at your door. We all thought that dancing was a joke, not knowing that the actual juju is in that dancing.
The more the more, assured the victory. Now we know much better. Adeleke dance on joor…. Ijo wa le se ooooo
The APC may just have made that mistake in Osun State.
Many months ago, after the PDP, the platform on which Senator Ademola Nurudeen Jackson Adeleke had coasted to victory in the 2022 governorship election by the slimmest of margins, had lost virtually all its political teeth & became a shadow of itself, the incumbent Governor reportedly made overtures to move to the APC, the party at the centre.
Think about that for a moment. A sitting Governor was willing to join the ruling party. He wasn’t just another aspirant looking for a platform.
He was not a defeated politician seeking relevance. He was the incumbent.
A Governor with a tested electoral base, a recognisable name, a family political structure, the power of incumbency &, most importantly, an electorate that had already given him its mandate.
By all reasonable political calculations, this should have been an opportunity too tempting to ignore.
And there was another significant factor: the alleged move reportedly enjoyed presidential support.
Yet the APC in Osun, led by the President’s cousin, former 1 term Governor & current Minister of Marine & Blue Economy, His Excellency Gboyega Oyetola, & his loyalists, apparently chose another path.
They said no.
Today, after the result of the 2026 election, that decision looks less like political strategy & increasingly like a historic miscalculation.
Because the man they refused to admit into their party has just defeated them again. Total slam dunk!
And he has done it from the platform of a party that, before he arrived, possessed almost no serious electoral weight in Osun. Sometimes, politics has a way of writing its own punchlines.
They thought they were rejecting a liability. They may have rejected an asset. I can understand why the Oyetola camp may have resisted Adeleke’s entry.
Politics is, after all, personal as much as it is strategic.
They were still nursing the wound of 2022, when Adeleke defeated Oyetola & removed him from the Osun State Government House.
There was unfinished business. There was history. There was bruised pride.
And perhaps they believed that bringing Adeleke into the APC would amount to allowing the man who defeated them to come & occupy the very political house they had painstakingly rebuilt.
But politics is not therapy. Politics is arithmetic. And the APC appears to have allowed emotion, pride & the overconfidence of having a supposedly superior structure to overwhelm the cold mathematics of electoral politics.
They believed they had dotted their i’s & crossed their t’s. They had their candidate. They had their structure. They had the federal government. They had the party machinery.
They had a former Governor turned powerful Federal Minister behind their candidate.
And, perhaps most dangerously, they believed Adeleke was finished.
They assumed that once the PDP collapsed around him, he would collapse with it.
That was the fundamental miscalculation. They mistook the weakness of Adeleke’s former party for the weakness of Adeleke himself. And Osun has now demonstrated, rather spectacularly, that the 2 are not the same thing.
The candidate was stronger than the platform. This election has produced one of the most fascinating reversals of the conventional Nigerian political equation.
Ordinarily, the party carries the candidate. In Osun 2026, the candidate carried the party.
Before Adeleke’s arrival, nobody in his right mind would have regarded Accord at least in Osun state, as the electoral behemoth capable of producing 511,067 votes & winning 19 of Osun’s 30 local government areas.
But Adeleke brought something Accord did not possess: a personal political structure. He brought incumbency. He brought name recognition. He brought an established relationship with the electorate. He brought the Adeleke family. He brought Ede.
He brought the perception that his administration had performed, at least to a certain extent.
And he brought something political parties often spend fortunes trying to manufacture: emotional connection with the electorate.
That was the part the APC apparently failed to see. Osun had become tired of too much seriousness!
There is a less quantifiable but profoundly important dimension to this election. People appeared to like Adeleke. Not merely tolerate him. Like him.
His administration seemed considerably more approachable than some of the APC administrations that preceded it. The contrast was unmistakable.
Where the past sometimes projected an atmosphere of sternness, formality & political overeriousness, Adeleke arrived with something altogether different.
He was accessible. He was colourful. He was relaxed. He was unconventional. He was, quite frankly, happy-go-lucky.
And perhaps the people of Osun had simply had enough of politics that always looked like a funeral. Chai!!!
Perhaps they wanted a Governor who smiled. A Governor they could approach. A Governor who appeared to enjoy the job. Sometimes, that matters more than political strategists are willing to admit.
Because governance is not experienced through policy documents alone. It is experienced through perception.
And if the people perceive that their Governor is approachable, accessible & doing reasonably well, defeating him becomes considerably harder.
And, crucially, Adeleke appeared to have worked. This may be the most important factor of all. The electorate seemed to believe that Adeleke had done them well.
And once people believe that something is working, why should they abandon it for an experiment? Why exchange the known for the unknown?
Why leave a Governor they have experienced for another candidate whose performance they can only imagine? Better the devil you know than the angel you have never met.
That may have been the silent logic of a significant portion of the Osun electorate.
The APC may have thought it was offering Osun a better alternative. The electorate may simply have replied:
“But we are not asking for another alternative.”
The APC has repeatedly been its own worst enemy in Osun
The party’s report card in Osun has not been particularly flattering.
Yet it appears to have repeatedly placed its faith in assumptions that failed it.
1st, it assumed that the collapse of the PDP meant the collapse of Adeleke. It didn’t.
Then it assumed that Accord could not possibly become formidable. It did.
Then there was the period when it appeared that Accord Party might not even participate in the election. That could have changed the entire contest.
But the courts eventually removed that obstacle. Accord stayed.
Then came the EFCC matter involving the Governor’s administration, arriving at a particularly delicate moment & carrying the potential to cause enormous disruption.
That hurdle, too, was ultimately removed.
And so, one after another, the circumstances upon which the APC might have hoped to build its victory disappeared.
What remained was the most uncomfortable reality of all: Adeleke was still the incumbent, still popular & still standing.
Then came the Adeleke family. Some may choose to discount this.
I won’t. In fact, I consider it one of the decisive factors in the election.
Senator Adeleke’s elder brother, Dr. Deji Adeleke, gave the Governor something that money cannot easily manufacture: unshakable family backing. The head of the family was fully invested, & powerfully with his full chest & colossal resources.
And the extraordinary energy of his son too, international music superstar Davido, added another dimension to that family mobilisation.
It was not merely financial. It was moral. It was psychological. It was organisational. It was emotional. It was a family saying, loudly & unmistakably:
We are in this together. And then there was Ede.
Ede was not negotiating. Ede was not hedging. Ede was not experimenting. Ede was all in.
Adeleke polled 35,427 votes in Ede North & 26,188 in Ede South, a combined 61,615 votes.
The APC managed only 10,283 in Ede North & 6,219 in Ede South, a combined 16,502.
ADC managed 697.
That is not merely a local government result. That is a political fortress declaring its allegiance. The numbers eventually became impossible to argue with
Look at the final picture.
Accord: 511,067 votes.
APC: 444,815 votes.
ADC: 17,180 votes.
Accord won 19 of the 30 LGAs.
APC won 11.
The winning margin was 66,252 votes.
It may not be the largest margin ever recorded in a Nigerian governorship election. But victory does not become less of a victory because somebody wishes the margin were larger. Adeleke won.
And he won according to every constitutional & electoral parameter required to win. The smaller parties were never really in the conversation
The election also exposed the enormous difference between political visibility & political weight. There was a crowded field.
There were 15 political parties. The ADC & NDC were among them.
But when the votes were counted, the supposed political giants outside the 2 major contenders proved to be little more than spectators in the real contest.
ADC finished with 17,180 votes. That is barely a footnote beside Accord’s 511,067 and APC’s 444,815.
The lesson is brutal but useful: Noise is not structure. Publicity is not mobilisation. Political pedigree is not automatically political capital.
And the presence of famous politicians on a party platform does not necessarily mean the electorate is following them.
And then there is the psychological dimension
There was another factor that mattered greatly: the belief that the ballot would actually be allowed to speak.
At least from what Osun has demonstrated, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu appears to have communicated that INEC would be allowed to do its job without being openly commandeered for the benefit of the ruling party.
That matters.
Because had the electorate believed that the federal government would simply deploy the full machinery of the state to deliver Osun to the APC, the psychology of this election would have been entirely different.
Instead, the contest was allowed to breathe. And when it did, the people spoke. Adeleke has now defeated Oyetola twice.
This point deserves to be made without apology.
Adeleke has slam-dunked Oyetola again.
The 1st time, he defeated Gboyega Oyetola when Oyetola was the sitting Governor of Osun State.
Now, he has defeated him again while Oyetola is a powerful Federal Minister, with all the influence & access that such a position brings. And this time Oyetola was not merely a distant observer.
He backed his political protege, Bola Oyebamiji.
The APC had the federal structure. It had the former Governor. It had the Minister. It had the party machinery. It had the candidate. And yet, when the people had the final word:
Adeleke won.
So, what exactly did APC reject?
This is where the story becomes almost painful. The APC rejected a sitting Governor who was reportedly willing to join the party. Then it turned around & spent an election trying to defeat that same Governor.
And now, after spending enormous political energy attempting to remove him, the party has handed him another 4 years.
4 more years of incumbency. 4 more years to consolidate. 4 more years to deepen his relationship with the electorate. 4 more years to build his political structure. 4 more years to prepare for whatever political battle comes next.
If that is not a political miscalculation, then what is?
Perhaps history will ultimately prove that the APC’s rejection of Adeleke was not merely a missed opportunity.
It may have been the moment the party helped manufacture its own strongest opponent in Osun.
But Adeleke must now understand the magnitude of what the people have given him. This victory must not become triumphalism.
It must become responsibility. The Governor must be magnanimous in victory. He must remember that 444,815 people voted against him.
They are not enemies. They are citizens. They are Osun people. They deserve the same Governor.
The 2nd term must therefore be about consolidation, reconciliation, delivery & legacy.
The 1st 4 years earned him another 4. The next 4 must earn him history. And that is where the real story begins
Osun 2026 was not merely an election. It was a political laboratory. It tested incumbency against structure. It tested personality against party. It tested popularity against machinery. It tested old political assumptions against new political realities.
And the results were remarkably clear.
Aregbesola’s ADC could only muster 17,180 votes.
The mighty APC could not dislodge the incumbent.
Accord, a party that had previously been little more than a footnote in Osun politics, became the vehicle for 511,067 votes.
And the incumbent Governor whom the APC reportedly had the opportunity to absorb has now secured another 4 years outside its fold.
That is the irony of Osun 2026.
The APC may have been so certain that it did not need Adeleke that it failed to appreciate just how much it needed him.
And perhaps that is the lesson politicians should never forget: Never confuse the weakness of a man’s platform with the weakness of the man.
Sometimes, the platform collapses & the man remains standing. Sometimes, the party dies & the politician goodwill etc, survives. Sometimes, the candidate becomes bigger than the party.
And sometimes, perhaps most painfully of all, the man you reject today becomes the man you spend tomorrow trying desperately to defeat. The stone rejected soon became the chief cornerstone…
The APC had Adeleke within reach. It let him go. It then went to war against him.
And now, after all the calculations, all the structures, all the permutations, all the political pedigrees & all the certainty of victor, Adeleke is still standing.
And he is still the Governor of Osun State. History has a peculiar way of remembering political mistakes.
Some are forgotten. Some become footnotes. And some become the stories future generations tell about the moment a political party was offered the easiest route to victory, & proudly chose the harder road.
Osun 2026 may just be one of those stories.
APC will rue the day it rejected Adeleke’s overture.
Abiola Olatunde Aloba, wrote it. Proudly Ijesa by paternal blood!
