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Osun State Governor Ademola Adeleke is taking an early lead in the state’s governorship election held on Saturday.
According to Dataphyte, a data journalism organisation which collated results from the Independent National Electoral Commission’s Result Viewing Portal (IReV), Adeleke, who contested on the Accord Party platform, had polled 384,907 votes when News Central checked its election dashboard at 7:47 p.m. on Saturday.
News Central reports that IReV had uploaded 3,0265 of the 3,763 results, representing 78.42 percent, as of 7:55 p.m.
Bola Oyebamiji of the All Progressives Congress (APC) was in second place with 325,910 votes.
Najeem Salaam of the African Democratic Congress (ADC) was third with 12,529 votes as of the time of filing this report, with collation ongoing across the state’s 30 local government areas.
Collation figures showed that of the 845,100 registered voters in the state, 361,500 were accredited, representing a voter turnout of 42.8 percent.
A total of 351,500 valid votes were recorded, while 7,200 ballots were rejected.
The election follows a major political realignment in the state.
Adeleke won the 2022 governorship election on the PDP platform, defeating the incumbent APC governor, Gboyega Oyetola, according to results declared by the Independent National Electoral Commission.
Oyetola rejected the result and challenged Adeleke’s victory in court.
The election petition tribunal later annulled Adeleke’s victory and declared Oyetola the winner, but the ruling was subsequently overturned on appeal, allowing Adeleke to remain governor.
The legal battle deepened the rivalry between the two political camps that had dominated Osun politics.
The 2026 contest, however, has taken a different shape after Adeleke left the PDP and joined Accord in December 2025.
He subsequently emerged as Accord’s governorship candidate.
The defection was followed by a major movement of PDP lawmakers into Accord.
Consequently, the PDP did not field a governorship candidate in the 2026 election, leaving Adeleke to seek a second term under Accord, while the APC entered the contest with Oyebamiji.
