Adeleke Benefited From Off-Cycle Poll, Osun Renewed Hope Ambassadors’ Coordinator Claims

-Questions Sustainability Of Electoral Victory

An All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain in Osun State, and the State Coordinator of Renewed Hope Ambassadors, Oluomo Sunday Akere, has claimed that Governor Ademola Adeleke might not have secured re-election in the August 15, 2026 governorship election if the poll had not been conducted as an off-cycle election.

Akere argued that the 511,000 votes reportedly secured by Adeleke’s Accord Party during the election would be difficult to replicate in subsequent polls, alleging that voters from neighbouring states were brought into Osun to participate in the governorship election.

He made the remarks during an interview with Western Spring Television on Tuesday while commenting on the APC’s decision to appoint Adeleke as the Osun State coordinator of President Bola Tinubu’s 2027 re-election campaign.

Reacting to suggestions that Tinubu might prefer Adeleke, whom he described as a serial election winner, to the APC leadership in Osun, Akere questioned the credibility of the governor’s previous electoral victories.

He specifically disputed the outcome of the 2022 governorship election, which Adeleke won on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), noting that the APC had challenged the result up to the Supreme Court.

“The fact remains that in 2022, which you quoted, APC was said to have lost by a margin of 21,000 to 22,000 votes, which we contested at the tribunal up to the Supreme Court,” Akere said.

He added, “The final decision at the Supreme Court is left for history because I don’t want to believe that we lost that election.”

Speaking on the 2026 election, the APC chieftain insisted that the Accord Party would struggle to reproduce the level of electoral support attributed to it during the last governorship poll.

“Sincerely, the Accord in Osun cannot record the success attributed to them during the last governorship election,” he said.

Akere , the former Commissioner for Information and Strategy attributed the party’s performance to the off-cycle nature of the election, alleging that the arrangement created opportunities for individuals with substantial financial resources to mobilise voters from neighbouring states.

He further claimed that more than 200,000 people who voted for Accord in the last election would not be available to vote for the party in a future election because they would be required to exercise their voting rights in their respective states.

“If they were said to have garnered 511,000 votes in the last election, Accord cannot get that in the next election,” Akere said, adding that the off-cycle arrangement gave people with “access and fat pockets” the opportunity to bring voters from neighbouring states.

“I want to tell you emphatically, and I’m saying it on good authority, that over 200,000 that voted for Accord in the last election will not be here in January because they will have to stay in their state to cast their votes,” he claimed.

Despite questioning the circumstances surrounding the election, Akere acknowledged Adeleke as the winner of the 2026 governorship poll, saying the APC had decided against challenging the outcome in court.

The allegations concerning the participation of voters from neighbouring states were claims made by Akere during the interview and were not independently established in the report.