The Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) has declared the incumbent Governor of Osun State, Ademola Adeleke, winner of Saturday’s governorship election, securing a second term in office.
Adeleke, who contested on the platform of the Accord Party, polled 511,067 votes to defeat his closest challenger, Bola Oyebamiji of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who scored 444,815 votes.
The margin of victory was 66,252 votes.
The INEC Returning Officer for the election, Prof. Joshua Olalekan Ogunwole, announced the result at the state collation centre in Osogbo on Sunday morning.
The African Democratic Congress (ADC) candidate, Najeem Salaam, came a distant third with 17,180 votes.
Adeleke won 19 of the state’s 30 local government areas, while Oyebamiji secured 11, according to the final results collated by INEC.
The victory gives Adeleke another four-year term after he defeated the then incumbent, Adegboyega Oyetola of the APC, in the 2022 governorship election. Adeleke won that election with 402,979 votes against Oyetola’s 375,077 votes and was sworn in on November 27, 2022.
Saturday’s election was closely contested, with Adeleke and Oyebamiji emerging as the dominant candidates in the race. The election was conducted across the state’s 30 local government areas, with 2,339,233 registered voters and 1,906,391 Permanent Voter Cards collected ahead of the poll.
The contest was also marked by allegations of vote-buying, technical difficulties with the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System and other incidents reported at some polling units. The police also announced the arrest of an Accord lawmaker and the recovery of more than 200 Permanent Voter Cards during an operation in Ikire.
Adeleke’s re-election keeps the governorship in the Accord Party after his defection from the Peoples Democratic Party. He had contested and won the 2022 election as a PDP candidate before switching to Accord ahead of the 2026 poll.
The result also marks another setback for the APC in its bid to reclaim the state after losing the governorship to Adeleke in 2022.
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