Oyetola, Oyebamiji and the Osun Guber Equation -By Abiodun KOMOLAFE

Make no mistake: the Osun State governorship election, slated for August 8, this year, is far from a done deal. We are looking at a scrappy, bruising, super three-horse race. The current clout of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Osun simply does not mirror its dominance in Ekiti, where the ruling party appears more entrenched ahead of its own June 20, 2026 contest.

With no real ideological daylight between the major contenders – the Accord Party (A), the Action Democratic Congress (ADC), and the APC – personality will be thrust to the fore. In the end, the individual, not the platform, will likely be the deciding factor.

Asiwaju Munirudeen Bola Oyebamiji – known to everyone simply as AMBO – will have former Governor Gboyega Oyetola in his corner, to borrow from boxing parlance. Across the ring, the chief motivator of the ADC’s campaign will be his predecessor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola. Effectively, we are looking at a titanic clash of personalities, a shadow-war that might just swallow the actual names on the ballot.

What Oyebamiji must lean on is the growing, restless clamour across the state for real managerial competence. Right now, there is an eerie feeling that Osun’s stewardship has become haphazard – a ship drifting without a clear map for sustainable development. AMBO can seize an early lead if he sells himself as the steady hand – a seasoned manager capable of rising above petty bickering to lock the state’s sights back on actual development. He has no choice!

Like him or not, Rauf Aregbesola remains a formidable grassroots engine and a ferocious campaigner. On his own, the ADC candidate lacks a particular persona that truly sticks with the streets, meaning he’ll be forced to lean hard on the charismatic Ogbeni to do the heavy lifting of the campaign.

Oyebamiji and his mentor – the current Minister of Marine and Blue Economy – will inevitably beat the drum of ‘the benefits of aligning with the centre.’ This plays the potent ace card of ‘Cultural Hegemony’, which, in our local parlance, translates to the persuasive ‘Omo wa ni, e jé ó sé’ (He is our son, let him lead). This is a massive advantage for the Oyetola/Oyebamiji camp and one that must be kept in constant rotation; after all, politics is built on the law of constant reminders, as that master of the dark arts, Niccolò Machiavelli, was wont to say. It is a card that will be flogged to death, and one the Ademola Adeleke camp will find incredibly difficult to neutralize.

On his part, Adeleke is wrestling with both image and political demons. It feels as though Osun, under the governor, is drifting in a state of anomie. People aren’t exactly enthralled by his stewardship, yet they don’t quite loathe him either. Of course, there’s a limit to how much ‘Skelewu’ rigmarole one can feed the electorate. Ultimately, one must wonder: beyond just jumping in the ring, what exactly will Adeleke’s campaign message lean on?

The deeper truth? Adeleke is no orator, let alone a naturally commanding figure. But he’s got one wild card: his nephew. Bringing in Davido to stir the youth is a massive play, no doubt. But the real question is whether the governor has a team capable of actually decoding the lyrics of Osun politics – turning that stadium hype into cold, hard votes. Walahi, it’s a desperate gamble. After all, noise at a rally and numbers at the poll have never been known to share the same frequency.

With nearly 200,000 newly registered voters added to the state’s tally of 1.95 million, the real question is: what slice of that number falls into the ‘Davido bracket’ – the young, the restless, those for whom a superstar’s nod acts as a command? It will be telling to see if Osun APC keeps that same fire in the current registration drive. That momentum alone could shift the earth under the candidates’ feet.

The outcome of previous and current registration cycles – if leveraged with a sharp, strategic thrust – will be decisive. So, we must interrogate the demographic makeup of these new additions, specifically the geographic spread across the three senatorial districts. Particular attention must be paid to traditional, high-turnout hubs like Osogbo, Ede, Ilesa, Ile-Ife and Ijebu-Jesa. This distribution is a heavyweight factor that must sit at the centre of any serious analytical projection.

The gravity of current economic realities must be factored into every permutation. We are told that all politics is local, but the national economic crisis inevitably seeps down to the local government level. And, while the prize is still anyone’s to claim, the reality is that Oyebamiji sits on a heap of untapped advantages. If he shuffles his deck right and plays his cards with enough skill, he has a clear path to victory.

The past should serve as a guide, but it must not become an obsession. Life does not stop at a fact; it deals with it. Anything else is mere PR! Having lost the last two elections in a row, it is clear the structure of the Osun APC is currently fragile and must be revitalized with earnestness. In other words, the party can no longer take victory for granted.

To breathe new life into the fold, Oyebamiji should secure a first-class, shrewd campaign manager capable of weaving disparate strands into an unbreakable cord – and Oyetola must be central to this effort. He must leverage his vast networks and the substantial public goodwill he still commands. As I have noted elsewhere, how IleriOluwa rebuilds the party into a fighting force will largely define his legacy. Again, I stand by it!

While Osun APC is fortunate to have avoided major defections after the primary – likely because “federal might” makes decamping unattractive – this is no time to bleach reality with the toning cream of complacency. Take it or leave it, the war is far from won. Therefore, the party must conduct a thorough post-mortem of its setbacks and move swiftly to pacify those sitting on the fence, as well as those waiting for the election proper to “extract their revenge.”

History, it is often said, writes its summary not based on who shouted the loudest or danced the longest, but on whose policies outlived their tenure. Beyond the “Bitter Spectators” label, politics is more than a game of “who leads the house”; it is a contest of ideas. Above all, modern politics has transcended raw emotion; it is now about sifting through cold realities. Far from dwelling in the valley of “bitter spectators”, Oyetola and his lieutenants, like Oyebamiji, are the architects of the fiscal foundation upon which the current administration now builds.

To thrive, Osun does not need the erasure of Oyetola’s legacy to justify Adeleke’s presence. It needs a recognition that his “unfinished business” is, in fact, the ongoing pursuit of a state that works – not through the “heart of love” alone, but through the cold, hard discipline of governance.

As previously noted, ‘Cultural Hegemony’ – the instinctual pull to identify with one’s own, specifically a Yoruba man at the centre – remains a positive factor for the APC candidate, Bola Oyebamiji. His consistency and loyalty to both his principal, President Bola Tinubu, and his mentor, Gboyega Oyetola, are clean and clear. For now, discerning calculations put the APC candidate slightly ahead. But a caveat is necessary: these are early days, and the road to Bola Ige House remains long.

May the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world, grant us peace in Nigeria!

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