OSUN GOVERNORSHIP ELECTION 2026: Accord, APC and ADC Offer No Genuine Development
Beyond the regular payment of salaries and pensions, partial payment of salary and pension arrears, and some road constructions, which are executed through hyper-inflated contracts, there is little that is genuinely cheering about the Demola Adeleke/PDP/Accord Party government in Osun State.
While the clearance of salary and pension arrears is important, especially given the hardship imposed on workers and retirees under previous APC administrations of Rauf Aregbesola and Gboyega Oyetola, it remains a basic obligation of any government, not an extraordinary achievement deserving of uncritical praise. Yet, in more than 3 years in office (about 38 months), the Adeleke administration has only offset only about seven (7) to eight (8) months of the thirty-months arrears of half salary and half pension it inherited from the previous anti-worker administrations of Oyetola and Aregbesola. While this payment may be a far cry from the attitude of the previous administrations, which denied owing workers, it falls short of the election promise of the governor, Demola Adeleke three years ago, when he promised to offset the salary arrears. If it takes three years to pay eight months out of 30 months, how many years will it take the government to pay the rest?
Also, the story on infrastructure development is not a straightforward one. In the first instance, many of the major road projects such as Oke-fia flyover in Osogbo and Lagere flyover in Ile-Ife are inflated. Furthermore, while some local roads have been rehabilitated, several importance roads connecting communities and towns are still in deplorable conditions. For instance, the roads connecting and linking the Lagere flyover in Ile-Ife such as Iremo road, Ojoyin road, Eleyele road, among others are in terrible conditions. Added to this is the unexplained delay in the delivery of these projects, leading to avoidable hardship for commuters and citizens. Generally, we cannot reduce infrastructural development to mere laying of asphalt when it is divorced from comprehensive planning, transparency, and broader developmental priorities.
However, this criticism of the Demola Adeleke/PDP/Accord Party administration is not one that should be led by the APC or its junior partner in crime, the ADC led by former governor, Aregbesola. The two factions – Oyetola-led APC and Aregbesola-led ADC – presided over twelve years of governance that were deeply corrupt, anti-people, and in many respects openly sadistic. Their administrations were marked by anti-people policies that devastated livelihoods, undermined workers’ rights, destroyed public education and healthcare, and normalized austerity. Yet, leading politicians and their business partners enriched themselves, becoming sudden multimillionaires and billionaires. This record alone strips them of any moral authority to posture as credible alternatives today. Also nationally, the Tinubu/APC administration has amplified this horrible legacy, presiding over economic hardship, inflation, and social dislocation on a scale unprecedented in recent history.
Unfortunately, there is, at present, no genuine political alternative among the three dominant camps—PDP, APC, and ADC—who are best different faces of the same political coin. The Socialist Party of Nigeria (SPN), which could have provided a genuine socialist alternative has been undemocratically deregistered by the electoral management body, INEC. As a result, the next governorship election is likely to be determined less by ideas, programmes, or popular enthusiasm than by cash, coercion, and elite manipulation.
Recent comments by Mr. Bola Oyebamiji, the APC candidate in the 2026 governorship election and a protégé of Oyetola, suggest a strategy aimed at technically excluding Adeleke from the race altogether. He was quoted as saying the APC is playing a goalpost without a goalkeeper. Such manoeuvres is an implicit admission that the APC lacks the popular support required to win a free and fair contest in Osun. It is also a stark reminder of how deeply hated the party remains across the state.
Yet, the weakness and unpopularity of the opposition do not translate into genuine popular commitment to the Adeleke government. Beyond modest and limited achievements—principally in salary payments and road construction—the administration has failed to demonstrate the kind of political character or transformative vision that would inspire people to actively defend it. There is no sense of a government consciously aligning itself with the interests of working people, youth, farmers, or the urban poor. Consequently, if Adeleke is to secure a second term, it is likely to be through financial muscle rather than mass enthusiasm or political conviction.
More worrying is the broader policy direction—or lack thereof—of the current administration. Education, healthcare, employment generation, and agriculture have effectively been abandoned as priorities during the first term. Public schools remain underfunded, health facilities overstretched and ill-equipped, and young people face worsening unemployment. Rural economies and food production receive serious attention. If this pattern continues unchecked, a second term is unlikely to offer anything different, unless working people and youth, acting through their unions, associations, and community organisations, begin to mount sustained pressure on the government to change course.
A return of the APC to power would represent a major setback for Osun State. Given the party’s unrepentant anti-people orientation and its deeply undemocratic practices, both at the state and national levels, such an outcome would almost certainly mean renewed attacks on workers, intensified austerity, and further erosion of democratic space. As for the ADC, Aregbesola owes the people of Osun a clear and honest explanation: is he returning with a fundamentally different vision, or merely to plunge the state into another round of economic plundering, and elite enrichment?
Ultimately, the crisis of governance in Osun reflects a deeper crisis of political representation. What is urgently needed is the emergence of a new mass left party rooted in the struggles of workers, youth, farmers, and the poor—a party capable of articulating a coherent alternative to neoliberal capitalist agenda and elite domination. In the immediate term, however, the task is to rebuild and strengthen independent organizations of the masses: trade unions, student movements, youth groups, community associations, and civil society platforms. Through these, sustained demands can be raised for free and quality education, accessible and functional healthcare, decent jobs, public water supply, and adequate WASH facilities. Only through organized pressure from below can governance in Osun be forced to serve the majority rather than the few.