The so-called off-cycle governorship election slated for August 15 in Osun State is billed to be a straight fight between the incumbent governor, the ever-ebullient, happy-go-lucky Nurudeen Jackson Adeleke, and a former finance commissioner in the cabinet of Adeleke’s predecessor, Asiwaju Bola Munirudeen Oyebamiji, popularly called AMBO. He is an acolyte of the self-respecting, easy-going Gboyega Oyetola, a former governor of Osun State and current minister of Marine and the Blue Economy. He bore the brunt of Rauf Aregbesola’s overbearing rule and abuse of Osun people. Although a dark horse in the race, when Najeem Salam, the ADC candidate in the election, and his Aregbesola angle are thrown into the mix, then it becomes clear that the Osun State gubernatorial election is a contest of power between the present and the last two governors of the state.

Aregbesola’s support for Najeem Salam, who cannot hope to make a serious impact, not to mention win this race, is apparently to keep his ADC credentials as the national secretary of the party aglow. Otherwise, he enjoys a very warm relationship with Governor Nurudeen Adeleke, and it does not look like he would be unhappy to see him remain in office. His real problem is Gboyega Oyetola who, apart from his support of the APC candidate and being the one who succeeded him against his will and then proceeded to roll back some of his odd policies, is above all a nephew of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, his former benefactor and present political enemy. Aregbesola will only be too happy to see the APC candidate defeated. But it’s not going to be another dancing session for Mr. Jackson. By the time the election is over, he will have shed some pounds, hopefully.

Things are already proving testy with the incident at Okuku in Odo-Otin LGA where armed men, suspected to be political thugs, invaded an INEC PVC distribution centre this past Sunday and carted away two-some reports say three-packs of PVCs. Carelessly shooting into the air, they succeeded in scaring away residents of the Oyinlola DC Primary School, Ward 2 area, where the incident occurred. Yesterday was declared work-free in Osun for the people to get their PVCs. Perhaps to correct the brigandage of Odo-Otin. Aside from Osogbo, the state capital, towns in such places as Ile-Ife with its four LGAs, Ikire, and Ikoyi in Irewole local government area are particularly prone to violent outbursts, as have been witnessed in the state in recent times. The violent clash that resulted in the murder of Hon. Remi Abass, the local government chair in Ikire in February 2025, indeed the seizure of the Osun State local government funds amid the battle to control the local governments, is a fallout of the contest over who would control the state ahead of the election in August.

While he has not been spectacular in his performance, Nurudeen Adeleke has somehow found a formula that has so far worked with the people of Osun, at least what would seem to be the majority of the people in the absence of credible scientific data. He has maintained a responsive posture to the demands of the people even when this response has been mostly populist and where the demands have not been entirely met. He has also been able to do that one thing, among a few others, that the APC-led administrations had struggled to do without much success: pay salaries in a state with a high percentage of civil servants and others who depend on monthly government wages to survive. The so-called progressive arm of politicians that have governed the state, right from the mid-1990s when the likes of Chief Bisi Akande called the shot, has been harsh in its treatment of workers. It’s either they are being sacked, downsized, or their salaries are not paid at all; paid late; or, as was the case with Aregbesola, halved, and the whole payment arrangement is opaquely and brazenly executed without thought for the workers.

This was the origin of the Baba Hafusa (a populist corruption of half salary) tag that has been placed like a rap star’s chain on Rauf Aregbesola, a man who could be loud in proclaiming nonsense. Ikire-born Asiwaju Oyebamiji can, in my view, only be honestly assessed in terms of his principal’s, Oyetola’s, performance. His public roles have been largely as an appointee of mostly Osun state agencies. Yes, he was at one point the MD of the National Inland Waterways Authority where he had an uneventful tenure. In terms of Osun politics, it could be mistaken to adjudge him as anything other than an Oyetola appointee. Although he has been accused by his Accord Party rivals of withholding funds from critical sectors of the state as finance commissioner, a fair judge would find it hard to convict him on that count, to the extent he functioned at the pleasure of Gboyega Oyetola, the governor. A trained accountant who knew better than to amass foreign loans with little prospect of paying them back without unduly burdening the future, Oyetola tried to return Osun to the narrow path of commonsense governance, the one Aregbesola veered away from in his pursuit of his outlandish, half-baked socialist mumbo-jumbo he mistook for a Cuba-style leftist ideology.

To a great extent, what could have worked against Nurudeen Adeleke’s return was the federal factor represented by President Bola Tinubu. But he has been able to sidestep the booby traps of both local and national politics and has navigated his way out of the political minefield created by partisan politicking. Not even when he could have had a reasonable ground to fight has Adeleke yielded to the urge to confront Abuja. Not when Osun’s local council funds were seized (he chose the path of the courts rather than the battlefield) or when he was reportedly shut down during a social event involving the wife of the president, Oluremi Tinubu. Unlike the overweening butterfly, Seyi Makinde, who took himself for a bird and needlessly thrust his head into a frying pan of oil, Governor Nurudeen Adeleke knew the kind of battle to avoid and has for that reason been able to keep his head where his Oyo counterpart has been naively losing his. 

He even made an attempt to join APC when PDP finally burst at the seams. That he is not in the party today is not of his making but the determination of the APC apparatchik in Osun to keep him out. He has demonstrated his bona fides to the president, which may perhaps be why President Bola Tinubu has chosen to be neutral in the Osun election. For him, the better candidate could win, knowing either way the pendulum swings he stands best to gain.