Governor Ademola Adeleke of the Accord Party has been declared the winner of the August 15 Osun governorship election, polling 511,067 votes to defeat the All Progressives Congress candidate, Bola Oyebamiji, who scored 444,815 votes. The Independent National Electoral Commission’s Returning Officer, Prof. Joshua Olalekan Ogunwole, announced the result at the state collation centre in Osogbo on Sunday morning, handing Adeleke a winning margin of 66,252 votes and a second term. The African Democratic Congress candidate,

Najeem Salaam, trailed a distant third with 17,180 votes.

Adeleke’s victory was built on a commanding sweep of 19 of Osun’s 30 local government areas, against 11 for Oyebamiji. But buried inside that arithmetic is a quieter, more personal story: several of the state’s most storied political figures, men whose names have shaped Osun politics for two decades, could not deliver their own polling units, wards, or local governments on the day that mattered most.

Aregbesola Humbled in His Own Ijesaland Stronghold

Nowhere was that more stinging than at Polling Unit 001, Cooperative Building Junction, Isare, Ward 08, in Ilesa East Local Government Area, where former governor Rauf Aregbesola, now National Secretary of the African Democratic Congress, cast his ballot after voting was briefly disrupted at the unit. When results were announced, Oyebamiji’s APC polled 256 votes there, while Adeleke’s Accord managed only 43. Aregbesola’s own party and candidate, the ADC’s Najeem Salaam, could only muster 13 votes at the polling unit of the man leading the party’s campaign in the state.

The humiliation did not end at the polling unit. Ilesa East, the local government area anchoring Aregbesola’s Ijesaland base, was carried outright by the APC, with Oyebamiji polling 16,208 votes to Adeleke’s 12,280 and the ADC managing just 504 votes across the entire council. A former governor who once controlled the political machinery of the area found his own backyard rejecting not just him, but the very party he now leads.

Oyinlola’s Okuku Turns Its Back

A similar story played out for Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, governor of Osun between 2003 and 2010, who broke ranks with his old party structures to publicly endorse Oyebamiji ahead of the election. Oyinlola voted at Polling Unit 003, Ward 01, Court Hall I, Okuku, in Odo-Otin Local Government Area, his own hometown. The result there handed Accord 125 votes against APC’s 85, with the ADC picking up just five.

The pattern held at the local government level. Odo-Otin, the council that includes Oyinlola’s hometown, went to Accord by 18,003 votes to APC’s 15,435, a margin of more than 2,500 votes across the LGA. Despite his personal endorsement and stature as a former governor and one-time national secretary of the PDP, Oyinlola’s home council chose the incumbent he campaigned against.

Omisore Outvoted in Ife

Senator Iyiola Omisore, a former deputy governor and one-time National Secretary of the APC who threw his weight behind Oyebamiji after being sidelined in the party’s primary process, fared no better. At Polling Unit 003, Ife Ward 1 (Moore), St. Gabriel Primary School, in Ife East Local Government Area, Omisore’s own polling unit, Accord polled 131 votes to APC’s 85, with the ADC recording 10.

Ife East as a whole followed the same trajectory, going to Adeleke by a wide 27,201 votes to 18,600, one of the governor’s strongest showings anywhere in the state. For Omisore, a politician whose endorsement once carried significant weight in Ife politics, the local government area could not have delivered a clearer verdict against his preferred candidate.

Akande’s Split Verdict in Ila

Not every godfather’s defeat was total. Chief Bisi Akande, the founding interim national chairman of the APC and a former Osun governor, actually won his own polling unit. At Polling Unit 12, Ward 4, Atogbade, in Ila-Orangun, Ila Local Government Area, Oyebamiji polled 181 votes against Adeleke’s 121, a 60-vote lead for the APC at Akande’s own booth.

But Akande’s polling unit victory could not rescue his wider home council. Ila Local Government Area, the seat of Akande’s decades-long political authority, went to Accord by 16,211 votes to APC’s 12,934, a margin of more than 3,200 votes. Afrobeats star Davido, the governor’s nephew and an active campaigner for his uncle, celebrated the outcome on social media, declaring that “Baba Akande lost his ward” as results trickled in, a claim that, at the local government level at least, the official figures broadly support, even if his own polling unit held for the APC.

Oyetola’s Iragbiji Repeats a Painful History

Perhaps the most symbolically loaded result belonged to Adegboyega Oyetola, the immediate past governor and current Minister of Marine and Blue Economy, who now leads the APC in Osun State. Oyetola and his wife, Alhaja Kafayat Oyetola, voted at Ward 1, Unit 10, Iragbiji, in Boripe Local Government Area, at about 10:30 a.m. on election day. When the results were announced, Accord polled 120 votes against APC’s 81, a 39-vote margin for Adeleke at the former governor’s own polling unit.

The outcome echoed almost exactly what happened in the 2022 governorship election, when Adeleke also defeated Oyetola at his polling unit, then by a still-wider margin. For the second consecutive governorship cycle, the man who once governed Osun for four years could not carry his own voting booth against Adeleke.

As with Akande, however, Oyetola’s personal setback did not extend to his home council. Boripe Local Government Area, which includes Iragbiji, held firmly for the APC, with Oyebamiji polling 19,963 votes against Adeleke’s 12,448, one of the APC’s strongest performances anywhere in the state. Boripe was, in fact, the council that most emphatically rewarded APC loyalty even as its most prominent son lost his own polling unit.

A Smaller Party’s Quiet Footnote

Even further down the ballot, the pattern repeated itself in miniature. At Ward 1, Unit 2, Ibokun NUD Primary School, in Obokun Local Government Area, where the Peoples Democratic Party’s National Treasurer, Diran Odeyemi, cast his vote, Accord edged the APC 211 votes to 178. Yet Obokun as a whole went to the APC, which polled 16,120 votes against Accord’s 12,023 — another instance of a party figure’s personal polling unit diverging from the broader verdict of his council.

The Numbers Behind the Pattern

Taken together, the local government results paint a picture of an electorate that, in several of Osun’s most politically storied communities, voted independently of the men who once dictated its choices. Adeleke’s 19 winning councils included Ede North and Ede South, his home base, where he polled 35,427 and 26,188 votes respectively against APC’s 10,283 and 6,219, alongside Osogbo, Iwo, Egbedore, Ife Central, Ifelodun, Oriade, Ilesa West, Ayedaade, Ejigbo, Orolu, Ife North, Ayedire, Ifedayo and Boluwaduro, the last decided by a wafer-thin margin of 7,118 to 7,050.

Oyebamiji’s 11 councils, beyond Ilesa East and Boripe, included his own base of Irewole, where the APC posted its widest margin of the entire election, 29,972 votes to Adeleke’s 10,934, along with Olorunda, Obokun, Irepodun, Atakumosa West, Atakumosa East, Isokan, Ola Oluwa and Ife South.

Security Shadowed the Symbolism

The defeats at these polling units did not occur in a vacuum. Voting at Aregbesola’s unit in Isare was disrupted before ballots were cast, part of a broader pattern of tension that also saw hoodlums raid a Permanent Voter Card distribution centre in Odo-Otin, Oyinlola’s home council, in the days before the election. INEC’s Resident Electoral Commissioner for Osun, Dr. Oluwatoyin Babalola, had confirmed the Odo-Otin theft at a pre-election town hall, while cautioning against reading it as evidence the wider process was compromised, an assurance the eventual Odo-Otin result, which favoured Accord decisively, appeared to bear out.

Old Guard, New Verdict

What emerges from these individual results is less a story about vote totals than about political authority. Aregbesola, Oyinlola, Omisore, Akande and Oyetola represent, between them, more than four decades of Osun governance and party leadership, two serving as governor in the 2000s, one as governor between 2010 and 2018, one as deputy governor and senator, and one as governor between 2018 and 2022. All five threw their political weight behind candidates other than Adeleke. In every case except Akande’s and Oyetola’s polling-unit tallies, even their own polling units failed to reward that weight; in Akande’s and Oyetola’s, the polling unit went one way while the wider council went another.

Political analysts in Osogbo have long described the state’s politics as personality-driven, built on networks of loyalty cultivated over decades by figures like Akande, Oyetola, Aregbesola, Oyinlola and Omisore. Saturday’s results, precinct by precinct, suggest that loyalty has become harder to convert into votes, particularly in booths where the political figures themselves were physically present to vote and be seen doing so.

A Governor’s Home Ground Holds

By contrast, Adeleke’s own polling unit at Ward 02, Sagba Abogunde, Polling Unit 009, in Ede North Local Government Area, produced no such embarrassment. The governor arrived at around 8:10 a.m. to cast his vote, and Ede North went on to deliver one of his most lopsided results anywhere in the state, 35,427 votes to the APC’s 10,283, a margin of more than 25,000 votes in a single council.

What the Backyard Losses Signal

For Oyebamiji and the APC, the split results carry a double-edged message. The party’s strength in Irewole, Boripe, Ilesa East, Olorunda and several other councils shows it retains real organisational depth in parts of the state. But the inability of Aregbesola, Oyinlola and Omisore to move their own polling units, and Akande’s and Oyetola’s failure to hold their broader councils despite winning their booths, suggests that individual political capital in Osun no longer travels as far as it once did.

For Adeleke, the reverse defeats delivered a different kind of validation: proof that his appeal reached into rival strongholds deeply enough to contest, and in several cases win, the very units where his opponents’ godfathers stood to vote.

A Second Term, and a Changing Map

As Adeleke prepares for a second term after Sunday’s declaration, the ward-by-ward and unit-by-unit record of August 15 leaves behind more than a governorship result. It leaves a map of diminished personal authority among men who once treated Osun’s local governments as extensions of their own political households, and a reminder, ahead of the 2027 general elections, that in Osun at least, name recognition no longer guarantees a candidate’s own street.

Adeleke’s 511,067 to Oyebamiji’s 444,815, a 66,252-vote margin, will be what history records. But for Aregbesola in Isare, Oyinlola in Okuku, Omisore in Moore, Akande in Atogbade and Oyetola in Iragbiji, the more immediate reckoning happened much closer to home.