By Boma Lilian Braide (Esq)
Nigeria has perfected a peculiar art from turning the serious business of choosing a government into an uncut premium entertainment. Osun State offers the clearest illustration of this pattern at present. As its governorship election approaches on Saturday, 15 August 2026, the political theatre in the State of the Living Spring has reached fever pitch. Understanding the outcome will require looking past the noise to the substance beneath it, because beyond every Imole dance step, beyond the injunctions and beyond all campaign promises lies a question that will shape the lives of Osun’s people for the next four years: Who get to occupy the Osogbo Government House?
This is not a routine civic exercise in which citizens calmly weigh manifestos and vote. It is a contest defined by heavy spending, aggressive campaigning and open desperation. At the centre of the contest is Governor Ademola Adeleke, a man whose public image was built as much on his legendary leg work and flawless dance moves as on his record in office. For much of his first term, that image served him well. But the final stretch of this campaign has demanded far more of him than rhythm. It has demanded political survival. Suddenly, the music has changed from a sweet, bouncy beat to a very fast, stressful tune that requires serious administrative gymnastics.
Let us take a dramatic stroll down memory lane to see how we arrived at this glorious, messy checkpoint. Governor Adeleke originally won the governorship in 2022 under the giant umbrella of the People’s Democratic Party, defeating the incumbent Gboyega Oyetola. That victory closed a long and bitter chapter of legal disputes stretching back to the 2018 election. But because Nigerian politicians change political parties faster than a Lagos socialite changes lace materials for a weekend party, the governor did the unthinkable. By late 2025, the alliance that carried him to power had frayed. Citing internal disputes within the PDP, Adeleke picked up his famous dancing shoes, and left the party in December to secure the governorship ticket of the Accord Party, a relatively minor platform that had polled barely four thousand votes in the 2022 election. The defection reshaped the contest entirely. Instead of the familiar boring boxing match between the All Progressive Congress and the People’s Democratic Party that has defined much of Osun’s recent political history, voters now face a chaotic, three-headed monsters.
Adeleke defends his record as the Accord candidate. Munirudeen Bola Oyebamiji carries the APC banner, backed by the weight of a party that controls the federal government. Najeem Salaam represents the African Democratic Congress, positioning himself as an alternative to both established camps. Fourteen parties in total have fielded candidates, but these three have dominated the campaign trail across the state’s thirty local government areas.
Just weeks before the vote, the contest was thrown into further turmoil when the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission moved to restrict access to the Osun State Government’s Federal Statutory Allocation Account. The commission stated that it had been investigating alleged mismanagement of about eleven billion naira in ecology, intervention and federal allocation funds since March, and insisted the timing had nothing to do with the election.
Governor Adeleke rejected that explanation, describing the action as unconstitutional and warning that it threatened the government’s ability to pay salaries. His administration went on to file a two billion naira lawsuit against the commission and First Bank of Nigeria, arguing that the freeze had been imposed without a court order and in violation of the state’s financial autonomy. The dispute was resolved, at least for now, after President Bola Tinubu directed the EFCC to approach the courts to lift the restriction, saying he was embarrassed by the timing of the episode.
Whatever the legal merits on either side, the episode illustrates a recurring feature of Nigerian federalism that deserves sober scrutiny. State governments remain heavily dependent on federal allocations and federal goodwill, a dependence that leaves them vulnerable to pressure at precisely the moments when independence matters most. Anti-corruption enforcement is essential to Nigeria’s democratic health, and no state government should expect immunity from scrutiny simply because an election is near. But when the timing of enforcement so closely tracks the electoral calendar, and when a single presidential phone call can apparently unlock what due process alone could not, citizens are right to ask whether institutions built to serve the public interest are instead being deployed as instruments of political leverage. That question does not belong to Osun alone. It echoes a broader pattern visible across the country, in which federal power and state resources are wielded as weapons in the contest for political survival, regardless of which party sits where.
Beyond the immediate contest, the Osun poll carries significance for Nigeria’s electoral system as a whole. Held less than a year before the 2027 general election, it is widely regarded as an early test of the Independent National Electoral Commission’s preparedness and neutrality, and of how well the country’s institutions can withstand pressure in a genuinely competitive, multi-party environment. A credible outcome, free of the kind of institutional interference witnessed in the account freeze episode, would offer reassurance ahead of the larger national contest to come. A flawed one would deepen an already widespread public scepticism about whether elections in Nigeria are decided by voters or by those who control access to money and machinery.
While the politicians spar over accounts and allegations, ordinary residents of Osun continue to grapple with the immediate pressures of daily life; rising food prices, costly transport and limited disposable income. It is a familiar and troubling irony of Nigerian elections that the same difficulties politicians largely fail to address during their term in office become the very leverage used to secure votes as polling day approaches. Rice, salt and small cash payments appear where policy solutions did not, offered as goodwill in the final days of a campaign that had four years to demonstrate it. Such transactions may feel like relief in the moment, but they function as a trap. A single day of largesse cannot compensate for years of unmet needs, and a vote surrendered for a token payment is, in effect, a mortgage placed on the voter’s own future, one that leaves hospitals unbuilt, schools underfunded and security fragile for another electoral cycle. Breaking that cycle requires a deliberate shift in how voters weigh what is placed before them, treating campaign season generosity with suspicion rather than gratitude, and asking instead what each candidate did, or failed to do, in the years when no election was imminent.
The competing campaigns have not made the choice any easier to parse. The Accord Party points to road construction and regular salary payments as evidence of a transformed state, treating the timely payment of wages as an achievement rather than a basic obligation of government. The APC counters that the administration has spent well over a trillion naira without creating sustainable employment for the state’s youth, and has promised a thorough investigation of the outgoing government’s finances should it win power. Each side accuses the other of exaggeration, and the exchange has grown heated enough to spill into local tensions, with reports of destroyed campaign materials and a climate of unease in some communities. Whichever claims prove accurate, this back and forth of accusation and counter accusation offers voters little that resembles a substantive policy debate. It falls to the electorate itself to demand better and to look beyond the rhetoric of both sides.
Ultimately, the outcome in Osun will not be decided by the EFCC, by the security personnel deployed for the election, or by the politicians shouting from campaign platforms. It will be decided by ordinary voters exercising their constitutional right at the ballot box. That responsibility carries real weight. Selling one’s vote, or staying away from the polls out of apathy or fear, forfeits the moral standing to complain when governance falls short in the years that follow.
Good governance is not found in a plate of election season jollof rice, however generously served. It is built through functioning healthcare facilities, meaningful support for agriculture, sustainable job creation and institutions that serve the public rather than the politically connected.
As Osun’s people prepare to vote, they owe it to themselves and to the state’s future to evaluate candidates on the basis of competence, character and demonstrable results rather than charisma, spectacle or short-term inducements. The choice belongs to them, and so, ultimately, will its consequences.
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