By IKPAT UduakAbasi
Politics is often described as the art of the possible, but elections have a way of exposing the difference between political calculations made in boardrooms and the verdict formed in the hearts of the ordinary voters at any given election. The just concluded Osun governorship election offers precisely such a moment of a deep reflection.
Beyond the victory of Gov. Ademola Adeleke, the defeat suffered by the All Progressives Congress (APC) presents a deeper lesson about the management of political coalitions, the value of grassroots relationships and the danger of assuming that a party’s institutional strength can permanently substitute loyalty.
For Akwa Ibom, where the APC is expanding its political family ahead of 2027, Osun should be studied not with triumphalism or partisan emotion, but as a cautionary mirror.
The Osun story becomes even more instructive when viewed against President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s repeated insistence that the election should provide a fair and credible expression of the people’s will. When the votes were eventually counted, Adeleke of Accord emerged victorious with 511,067 votes against APC candidate Bola Oyebamiji’s 444,815. Rather than contesting the legitimacy of the outcome, President Tinubu congratulated Adeleke, describing the result as an affirmation of democratic development. That response matters because it demonstrates a fundamental principle of democracy.
A political leader may have preferences, but the electorate retains final authority. Yet the most important Osun lesson lies beyond the figures. The election did not suddenly become difficult for the APC on polling day. The contest had been shaped by months of political calculations, competing interests, grievances and attempts at reconciliation. Reports and political accounts surrounding the race pointed to the strength of Adeleke’s grassroots connection, while the APC struggled to achieve the level of internal cohesion required to translate its national influence into a decisive state-level victory. That distinction between political machinery and connection deserves serious attention in Akwa Ibom.
A party can possess the government, national visibility, influential appointees, enormous resources and a formidable campaign structure and still discover, at the decisive moment, that the people expected to carry its message at the grassroots are not sufficiently emotionally invested in its success. Elections are therefore rarely lost on election day.
More often, they are lost gradually, in neglected relationships, unresolved grievances, poor communication , poor reward system or wounded loyalties and the quiet alienation of people who once believed they mattered to the political organisation they helped build from the crash.
This is where the complicated history surrounding the APC’s Osun primary becomes particularly instructive. The emergence of Bola Oyebamiji (AMBO) did not automatically erase the grievances generated during the APC nomination process. Where aspirants, stakeholders and influential political blocs believe that their interests have not been accommodated, reconciliation becomes more than ceremonial.
It becomes an essential component of electoral preparation. President Tinubu’s intervention to bring contending interests together was therefore significant, but it also revealed a larger truth, the national leader can facilitate reconciliation, but no president can personally repair each and every broken relationship between a party and its members at ward, local government and polling-unit levels.
The role of Senator Iyiola Omisore, the immediate past National Secretary of the APC, also belongs to this larger picture and conversation. Omisore’s political influence in Osun, particularly around Ife, made his relationship with the party’s electoral project a matter of considerable political interest. Claims that he and his supporters were insufficiently mobilized behind the APC candidate in the final stretch should be treated as political allegations rather than an established single cause of the defeat that’s just experienced.
But the broader point remains difficult to dismiss, when influential stakeholders feel marginalized, or when their political structures are not fully integrated into a candidate’s campaign, the party cannot simply assume that their accumulated political capital will automatically be transferred to its preferred candidate. There is an even more sobering dimension to ‘IMOLE’ story.
His political journey has not been without encounters with the coercive side of Nigeria’s political environment. In 2018, shortly before the Osun governorship election, he faced police moves connected to allegations of examination malpractice and forgery, a court subsequently restrained his arrest and detention so that he could participate in the election. He was later arraigned on related allegations, which he denied, and subsequently maintained that the prosecution was politically motivated and baseless.
In later years we have witnessed the awful experience he faced with Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), in the build up to the concluded elections and the President’s role in migrating it.
The significance of this history is not to reopen old allegations or suggest that Adeleke’s present victory was caused by his previous encounters with security or anti-corruption institutions. It is to simply illustrate how fierce political adversity can sometimes deepen the bond with a politician and constituency.
A candidate who has experienced what his supporters perceive as undue political persecution can acquire an emotional connection with electorate that cannot be manufactured by campaign consultant. In Adeleke’s case, whatever political interpretation one places on those episodes, they formed part of a long political journey that ultimately brought him back to the electorate and the electorate answered with another mandate for a second term now.
For the APC in Akwa Ibom, this is where the Osun mirror becomes uncomfortable but useful. The party’s expansion in the state creates enormous opportunities, particularly with Governor Umo Eno’s alignment with the APC, the influence of President of the Senate, Senator Godswill Akpabio, and the broader national structure now also available to the state.
But expansion must not become displacement. The arrival of influential political actors and new members should enlarge the party’s capacity, not make those who built the party before its present political fortunes feel like strangers in their own political home, they’d built.
This is the place of what may appropriately be called the APC Aborigines, the men and women who were present when the party had to struggle for relevance, who built structures when victory was not assured, who defended the platform when its political future appeared uncertain and who accumulated relationships at the grassroots that cannot be replicated merely by appointments or political prominence. They are not asking that newcomers be rejected. They are asking that the history they represent should not be erased. They are asking to be heard, consulted, respected and meaningfully integrated into the party’s future.
Indeed, the principle of integration is perfectly consistent with Governor Umo Eno’s own mantra of “Akwa Ibom United.” The Governor has repeatedly argued that the state must rise above mere partisan divisions, respect its leaders and maintain the unity and peace that have enabled development. He has described unity as one of the most important achievements of his administration and has stressed that Akwa Ibom must not have competing “fronts” but a common shared purpose to always achieve.
Akpabio has similarly charged Governor Eno with the responsibility of uniting the state across political lines. But “Akwa Ibom United” must mean more than a beautiful political slogan. Unity becomes meaningful when people who once stood on different sides of the political divide can find room within a common project without any group being made to feel disposable. It should mean that newcomers are welcomed without humiliating old folds .
That experienced hands are retained without creating a closed political club, and that political influence is used to build bridges rather than establish new centres of exclusion. The APC’s challenge in Akwa Ibom is therefore not how to choose between its old and new political families, but how to make both families genuinely belong to the same house as it should be.
This is particularly urgent because 2027 will test whether the party has succeeded in converting political realignment into genuine grassroots ownership. It would be dangerous to assume that because the APC is the ruling party at the centre, or because it now has powerful figures and influential allies in Akwa Ibom, victory is automatically secured. National power can open doors, it cannot vote at every polling unit. Appointments can create influence, but cannot ensure party loyalty.
While endorsements can also generate headlines, they cannot substitute for the painstaking work of listening to the party members and communities. The lesson of Osun is therefore not that the APC is destined to lose in Akwa Ibom. Far from it. The lesson is that victory must be organized around the people at any point in time.
If the party’s longstanding members feel abandoned while newcomers receive all the attention, a dangerous psychological gap can emerge between the leadership and the grassroots. The most dangerous manifestation of that gap may not be open rebellion. It may be silence, the silence of members who attend meetings but no longer mobilize with conviction, the silence of structures that exist on paper but have lost their enthusiasm in its affairs.
And the silence of stakeholders who wait until the election day before deciding how much of their political capital they are then prepared to deploy. That is why genuine integration must begin long before the 2027 campaign reaches its climax. The APC in Akwa Ibom needs a deliberate conversation with its original builders, not merely to praise them for the past but to give them a meaningful stake in the state’s political future as well.
It needs reconciliation where grievances exist, consultation where decisions are being made, recognition where sacrifices have been overlooked, clear mechanism through which both old and new political actors contribute accordingly to the competence, capacity and commitment.
A party that successfully integrates its political capital is stronger than one that merely accumulates personalities. Osun has therefore handed Akwa Ibom state a lesson while there is still time to learn it from it. Governor Adeleke’s victory demonstrated that an incumbent’s opponent can remain electorally formidable when he retains grassroots affection, while the internal difficulties of his opponent showed how unresolved political relationships can complicate even a well-resourced campaign.
President Tinubu’s acceptance of the people’s verdict further underscored the central truth that, in the end, political power belongs to the electorate. For the APC in Akwa Ibom, the wisdom lies not in fearing that lesson but in acting on it.The 2027 election has not been won, just as it has not been lost. What will determine the outcome is what happens between now and then.
If the APC succeeds in building a genuinely integrated political family, one in which its Aborigines are heard, newcomers are welcomed, and the grievances are addressed and every stakeholder feels ownership of the common project.
The Osun experience may become a lesson that strengthened the party rather than a warning it ignored. But if those who built the political foundation are treated as expendable after new occupants arrive, the party may discover, as Osun has reminded Nigerian politics once again, that the most formidable political structure is ultimately the one that has the people inside it.
For an Akwa Ibom under Governor Umo Eno therefore, “Akwa Ibom United” should not merely be a mantra repeated from podiums. It should become the governing philosophy of political engagement, unity without exclusion, without suppression, expansion without displacement, or reconciliation without humiliation and progress without forgetting those who laid the foundation which it stands.
That is perhaps the clearest lesson Osun offers A’Ibom people, and the most consequential one to absorb before the 2027 general elections.
