By Governor Ademola Adeleke’s re-election victory in the August 15, 2026, Osun governorship election was more than a local-government story. Rather, it was a sweep across all three senatorial zones of the state. A district-by-district breakdown and analysis of the results collated by INEC and announced at the State Collation Centre in Osogbo in the early hours of August 16, 2026, shows that the Accord Party candidate defeated the All Progressives Congress’ Bola Oyebamiji and the African Democratic Congress’ Najeem Salaam in Osun Central, Osun East, and Osun West; however, by markedly different margins that expose where each party’s real strength lies.
Statewide, Adeleke polled roughly 511,067 votes to Oyebamiji’s 444,815, with Salaam a distant 3rd with 17,180 votes. Aggregating the 30 local government results by senatorial zone tells a more nuanced story than the topline numbers suggest, especially in Osun East, where the APC’s late haul of defecting federal lawmakers failed to convert into a district win.
Osun West Senatorial District
Osun West is made up of 10 local governments: Iwo, Irewole, Aiyedaade, Aiyedire, Ede North, Ede South, Egbedore, Ejigbo, Isokan, and Ola-Oluwa. Notably, Governor Adeleke recorded his most emphatic win in Osun West. Across the district, Accord polled roughly 189,052 votes against APC’s 143,997 and ADC’s 8,052, a margin of victory well over 45,000, the widest of the three senatorial zones.
This dominance is unsurprising, and this is because Osun West houses Ede, the governor’s hometown, and it was the zone political observers flagged before the election as Adeleke’s strongest turf, building on his “massive” showing there in 2022. The governor swept seven of the ten local governments in the district. These are Iwo, Aiyedaade, Aiyedire, Ede North, Ede South, Egbedore, and Ejigbo, leaving the APC to hold only Irewole, Isokan, and Ola-Oluwa.
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The single widest result anywhere in the state came from Ede North, Adeleke’s home council, where Accord polled 35,427 against APC’s 10,283, a margin of over 25,000 votes in one local government alone. Ede South followed the same pattern, with Accord winning 26,188 to APC’s 6,219. These “E4 federal constituency” that make up the Ede federal constituency, Ede North, Ede South, Egbedore, and Ejigbo, which pre-election reporting flagged as carrying nearly 320,000 registered voters between them, performed exactly as expected as Adeleke’s stronghold.
The one significant dent in this dominance came from Irewole, Oyebamiji’s own home council, where the APC candidate recorded 29,972 votes to Accord’s 10,934, a gap of over 19,000. Isokan and Ola-Oluwa also went to the APC, though by far tighter margins. Despite conceding these three councils, Accord’s dominance along the Ede-Egbedore-Ejigbo axis and in Iwo was more than enough to carry the district comfortably.
Osun Central Senatorial District
Osun Central comprises Osogbo, Olorunda, Boripe, Odo-Otin, Ila, Ifedayo, Irepodun, Boluwaduro, Ifelodun, and Orolu, and it produced the tightest contest of the three districts. Accord polled roughly 169,164 votes against APC’s 162,094 and ADC’s 4,472, leaving Adeleke’s winning margin in the zone at only around 7,000 votes, a far cry from his showing in the West.
This is the district anchored by the state capital, Osogbo, and pre-election analysis had suggested that whichever candidate won Osogbo and Olorunda would likely carry the whole senatorial district. That prediction proved only half right. Adeleke won Osogbo itself, the state’s most populous local government with over 167,000 registered voters, by a solid 36,480 to 30,474. But he narrowly lost Olorunda, the council neighbouring the capital, to the APC by a slim 24,671 to 23,514, a margin of barely over 1,000 votes.
Accord carried 7 of the 10 councils in the district: Osogbo, Boluwaduro, Ifedayo, Ifelodun, Ila, Odo-Otin, and Orolu, while APC took Boripe, Irepodun, and Olorunda. Boripe was particularly costly for Accord, with APC winning 19,963 to 12,448, a margin of nearly 7,500 votes that almost single-handedly offset Accord’s advantage in Osogbo.
However, Osogbo’s sheer size as the largest electorate in the state, combined with solid strengths in Odo-Otin, Ifelodun, and Ila, pulled Osun Central into Adeleke’s column despite the loss of the Olorunda “gateway” council that pundits had treated as the bellwether.
Osun East Senatorial District
Osun East is made up of Ife Central, Ife East, Ife North, Ife South, Ilesa East, Ilesa West, Atakumosa East, Atakumosa West, Obokun, and Oriade, and it produced the most politically significant upset of the night. Accord polled roughly 152,951 votes against APC’s 138,724 and ADC’s 4,656, giving Adeleke a winning margin of about 14,200 votes, his second-widest after Osun West.
This is the district where, ahead of the election, the APC’s campaign received what was widely billed as a decisive boost, going by the defection of virtually the entire bloc of federal lawmakers from the zone, including Senator Francis Fadahunsi, who represents the district in the National Assembly, Wole Oke of the Ijesa-North federal constituency, Sanya Omirin of Ijesa-South, and Taofeek Ajilesoro of the Ife federal constituency. Party leaders had predicted this defection would tilt the pendulum decisively toward Oyebamiji. It didn’t.
The local government split was almost perfectly even, five councils apiece. Accord won Ife Central, Ife East, Ife North, Ilesa West, and Oriade, while APC took Atakumosa East, Atakumosa West, Ife South, Ilesa East, and Obokun, notably including Obokun, Senator Fadahunsi’s own base, where he had personally urged voters to come out and vote on election day.
The district’s outcome was decided less by any single landslide result and more by Accord’s edge in Ife East. This council, the district’s most populous with over 128,000 registered voters, went comfortably to Accord by 27,201 to 18,600, and combined with wins in Ife Central and Ife North, gave Accord enough of a cushion to absorb APC’s gains in Ilesa East and Obokun. The defections of the federal lawmakers appear to have shored up APC’s vote share in their individual home turfs without being enough to flip the wider zone.
A Margin More Than Doubled Since 2022
Beyond the district-by-district breakdown, the 2026 result carries an important historical dimension when set against Adeleke’s first victory in 2022. In that election, contesting on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, Adeleke defeated the then-incumbent APC governor, Gboyega Oyetola, by a comparatively slim margin of 28,344 votes, polling 403,371 to Oyetola’s 375,027. It was a win, but a narrow one, and it was followed by a tribunal ruling that briefly overturned it before Adeleke’s eventual reinstatement on appeal.
Four years on, and now on the Accord platform, the governor’s winning margin has more than doubled to 66,252 votes, with Adeleke polling 511,067 to Oyebamiji’s 444,815. That is not simply a bigger win in absolute terms; it reflects a meaningfully stronger showing relative to his closest challenger than he managed in 2022, at a time when incumbency, anti-incumbency sentiment, and a reconfigured opposition might all have been expected to narrow his advantage rather than widen it.
The spread of that support tells a similar story. In 2022, Adeleke won 17 of the state’s 30 local government areas. In 2026, he won 19. The two additional councils may seem modest on paper, but combined with the doubled margin, they point to a governor who has not merely held his 2022 coalition together but expanded it, consolidating support beyond his traditional Osun West base while also making inroads in councils that were more competitive, or even lost outright, four years ago.
The Bigger Picture
Putting the three districts together explains the state-level arithmetic cleanly, where Accord’s 511,067 combines contributions of roughly 189,000 from the West, 169,000 from Central and 153,000 from the East, while APC’s 444,815 splits into about 144,000, 162,000, and 139,000, respectively. APC’s closest run at Adeleke came not in its declared stronghold of the East, but in Osun Central, where Osogbo’s turnout, more than any single decisive council, tipped the balance for the governor.
For APC, the results suggest that its core strength remains concentrated in individual home-base LGAs (Irewole for Oyebamiji, Obokun for Fadahunsi, and Wole-Oke, Olorunda) rather than translating into district-wide dominance, and the high-profile defections in Osun East, while real, were not sufficient to overturn Accord’s ground game in Ife East and Ilesa West. For Salaam and the ADC, the results confirm the pre-election assessment that the party lacks the state-wide structure to be competitive, with its best showing, Ejigbo’s 5,053 votes, still a fraction of the leading two parties’ totals in any single council.
Vote figures are drawn from local government results announced by INEC returning officers at the Osun State Collation Centre, Osogbo, and as monitored by our correspondent.
