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| Ogbeni Aregbesola |
Former Governor. Former Minister. Former Commissioner. Former best friend & confidant of President BAT GCFR. And now, a full-time opposition member of the ADC, a staunch political opponent of the APC & everything it represents & also Governor Adeleke too.
But politics, ultimately, is not about titles, history, proximity or mythology. Politics is about numbers. And when the numbers come, they have a rather unforgiving way of stripping away the mystique.
If there is one thing the recent governorship election in Osun State has exposed, it is the uncomfortable truth about the supposed political weight of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, the former Commissioner for Works in Lagos, 2-term Governor of Osun State & former Minister of Interior under the APC-led administration of PMB.
For years, Aregbesola has been spoken of, & has spoken of himself, as one of the formidable political forces in Osun &, by extension, one of the major political players in the Southwest. But the ballot box has now had its say.
And from what the ballot box has told us, Ogbeni Rauf may have been a political heavyweight in the imagination of many, but the evidence before us suggests something considerably less imposing: a paperweight or in fact, a no weight at all! Chai!!!
That is not an insult. It is an electoral diagnosis. And the numbers are there for everyone to interrogate. So, how did the great political machine perform? Consider this.
Aregbesola is not some newcomer to Osun politics. He governed the state for 8 years. He was once regarded as one of the strongest political figures in the state. He was a major political ally of President Tinubu. He has a reputation for having a formidable support base, particularly within the Ijesa axis of the state, where he hails from.
He has now thrown his considerable political reputation behind the African Democratic Congress, ADC.
And for this election, the party’s candidate was no political lightweight either. Rt. Hon. Najeem Folasayo Salaam, former Speaker of the Osun State House of Assembly & a former member of the House of Representatives, was the ADC candidate.
If Aregbesola's much-advertised political weight is as substantial as it has been projected, this should have been the moment to demonstrate it.
Instead, Salaam finished a distant third with a paltry 17,180 votes.
The Accord Party's Senator Ademola Adeleke (incumbent Governor, won with 511,067 votes, while the APC's Bola Oyebamiji came 2nd with 444,815 votes. The winning margin was therefore a staggering 66,252 votes.
That is not a minor electoral gap. That is an electoral canyon. And it becomes even more revealing when one begins to dissect where these votes actually came from.
The Ijesa question
Aregbesola is an Ijesa man. The Ijesa bloc is therefore one of the natural places where one would expect his political influence to be most visible. But what happened?
In the 6 local government areas that make up the major Ijesa concentration, Ilesa East, Ilesa West, Obokun, Oriade, Atakunmosa East & Atakunmosa West, the numbers tell a story that is difficult to explain away. Accord Party: 77,193 votes. APC: 79,920 votes. ADC: 2,351 votes.
Let that sink in.
In the very political territory from which one of the supposed Southwest's most prominent ADC figures hails, the ADC could only muster 2,351 votes across 6 local governments hmmmmm...
Two thousand, three hundred & fifty-one.
For a political structure that has been portrayed as formidable, that number is not merely disappointing. It is devastatingly revealing. And it gets even more interesting.
Even Aregbesola's own Ilesa political territory did not exactly rise to the occasion for the ADC.
At his own polling unit in Ilesa, the reported figures were APC 256, Accord 43 and ADC 13. Thirteen.
Sometimes, politics does not need a long speech to make its point. A ballot paper can say it in three numbers.
And then came Ejigbo
The ADC candidate, Najeem Salaam, is from Ejigbo LG. Surely, if anywhere was going to be an ADC fortress, this should have been it. Yet Ejigbo Local Government gave Salaam only 5,053 votes.
Accord Party received 18,458.
APC received 16,195.
In other words, both of the 2 leading parties comfortably defeated the ADC in the very local government from which its candidate hails.
The supposed fortress was breached from within. And that is precisely why the result becomes bigger than Najeem Salaam.
It raises a much more fundamental question about the political structure supposedly standing behind him.
Because candidates do not manufacture 17,180 votes out of thin air. They are the product of structures, personalities, mobilisation, loyalty & political influence.
And when all of those are put to the test, the ballot box tells us what actually exists, not what has been said to exist.
Adeleke's Ede fortress
Now look at the other side of the equation.
Governor Ademola Adeleke did not merely win Osun. He demonstrated the power of his own political base.
In Ede North which is his paternal base, the Governor polled 35,427 votes. In Ede South, he polled another 26,188.
That gives him a combined 61,615 votes from the 2 Ede local governments alone.
The APC managed 10,283 in Ede North & 6,219 in Ede South, a combined 16,502. That's a margin of 46,113. It's so obvious where the votes which propelled him to victory came from then.
ADC? Just 697. The contrast is almost brutal.
Adeleke's Ede delivered. Aregbesola's ADC did not.
And perhaps this is one of the most important lessons of this election: Political mythology may create headlines, but political structures produce votes.
Then came Ife
The APC's reconciliation with Senator Iyiola Omisore was another major political calculation in this election. But did it produce the expected electoral dividend?
The results suggest otherwise.
In the 4 Ife local governments, Accord won 3.
Ife North: Accord 13,879; APC 9,613.
Ife Central: Accord 21,171; APC 15,913.
Ife East: Accord 27,201; APC 18,600.
In Ife South, APC narrowly prevailed with 14,678, against Accord's 13,507. By just an inconsequential 1,171 votes which didn't count for much in the overall.
Overall, Accord polled 75,758 votes across the 4 Ife local governments, while APC managed 58,804.
ADC? A mere 2,305 votes. Again, the numbers refuse to cooperate with the mythology.
Then came Irewole
Bola Oyebamiji, the APC candidate, demonstrated that political candidates can also have formidable local structures.
In his Irewole Local Government, he polled 29,972 votes, against Accord's 10,934.
ADC?v275 votes.
Two hundred & seventy-five. The numbers keep speaking. And they are becoming increasingly difficult to silence.
The Senatorial Districts tell an even bigger story
Perhaps the most compelling way to examine this election is not merely through individual local governments but through the 3 senatorial districts in the state.
Osun has 3 senatorial districts, each comprising 10 local governments.
And Accord Party won all 3 senatorial districts. In Osun Central, Accord polled 169,164 votes, against APC's 162,094 and ADC's 4,472.
In Osun East, Accord polled 152,951, against APC's 138,724 & ADC's 4,656.
In Osun West, Accord polled a remarkable 188,952, against APC's 143,997 & ADC's 8,052.
Again, look closely at that last figure.
The biggest margin of victory came from Osun West, the same senatorial district from which the 3 major contestants emerged. And Adeleke did not merely win there. He danced home. He actually breakdanced! Chai!!!
The aggregate numbers across the 3 senatorial districts tell the story even more forcefully:
Accord: 511,067
APC: 444,815
ADC: 17,180
There is almost something poetic about the disparity.
The ADC, with all the political noise & pedigree surrounding it in Osun, could not even get to twenty thousand votes in an election where the 2 leading parties were battling in the hundreds of thousands.
So, what exactly has Osun 2026 demystified? It has not demystified Rauf Aregbesola as a man. It has not erased his history.
It has not taken away the fact that he was a 2-term Governor. It has not erased his years as a major political figure in Lagos or his tenure as Minister of Interior.
And certainly, it does not erase his former proximity to President Tinubu.
But it has done something more important. It has subjected the mythology of his current political influence to the coldest & most objective test available in politics: the ballot box. And the ballot box has returned a rather humbling verdict.
Perhaps Ogbeni Rauf is not the political heavyweight many imagined him to be.
Perhaps his political influence today is considerably smaller than his reputation.
Perhaps he has mistaken historical relevance for contemporary electoral strength.
Or perhaps, more simply, he has overestimated the number of people who are still willing to follow him politically.
Whatever the explanation, Osun 2026 has provided the 1st hard empirical evidence with which the question can be seriously examined.
And the evidence is not flattering. But there is an even bigger question. What does all of this mean for 2027?
That is where this becomes considerably more interesting.
Can the ADC, under Aregbesola's leadership, suddenly transform 17,180 votes in Osun into a meaningful presidential-election structure across the Southwest?
Can a party that could only manage 2,351 votes across the 6 major Ijesa LGAs suddenly become a serious electoral force?
Can a former Speaker from his own political camp poll only 5,053 votes in his own Ejigbo, while Accord polled 18,458 & APC 16,195, & still claim a formidable grassroots machine?
These are not questions of sentiment. They are questions of arithmetic. And politics, especially electoral politics, has a brutal relationship with arithmetic.
But there is another intriguing dimension.
Governor Ademola Adeleke has publicly demonstrated support & cordiality towards President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, GCFR.
Yet in Osun, he has now defeated the APC candidate by a whopping 66,252 votes.
That tells us something important about Nigerian politics.
Local political allegiance & presidential political allegiance do not always travel together.
A politician can oppose the APC at the state level & still maintain a working relationship with the President at the federal level.
Adeleke's Osun victory therefore should not automatically be interpreted as a presidential referendum on Tinubu.
Neither should it be dismissed as irrelevant to 2027.
Rather, it raises a much more fascinating question: If Ademola Adeleke can command 511,067 votes in Osun while maintaining a publicly cordial relationship with President Tinubu, what happens when the presidential contest arrives?
And perhaps even more importantly: Where will the political energy that currently belongs to Adeleke's formidable Osun structure ultimately flow?
That is the question the political class should be asking.
Not merely who won Osun. Not merely who lost.
But what the numbers have revealed about who actually commands people, structures & loyalty when the rubber meets the road.
Because Nigerian politics has always had its legends. Its godfathers. Its kingmakers. Its strongmen. Its political juggernauts.
And, sometimes, its carefully cultivated myths.
But every 4 years, the ballot box comes along to ask one brutally simple question:
“Show me your followers.” In Osun 2026, the ballot box asked Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola that question.
And, at least from the numbers before us, the answer was surprisingly small.
Very, very small. That may well be the real story of Osun 2026.
Not simply the victory of Ademola Adeleke. Not simply the defeat of Bola Oyebamiji aka AMBO.
Not simply the spectacular underperformance of Najeem Salaam.
But the demystification of Ogbeni Rauf. The legend has met the numbers. And the numbers, as they say, do not lie.
Abiola Olatunde Aloba,
Ijesa by paternal blood.
Ijebu Ode blue blood by maternal connection.
