By adakole Elijah
Yesterday, Nigeria witnessed an off-cycle electoral crucible. An isolated contest in which the ruling behemoth — the All Progressives Congress — was hell-bent on seizing victory by hook, crook, and every conceivable stratagem.
Their desperation was twofold.
*First*, Osun State is reputed to be the ancestral bastion of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu. To conquer it would have been to further cement his vice-like grip on his home base.
*Second*, the APC sought to trumpet its political indomitability — to send an ominous signal that no force could dislodge it from the firmament of power.
That was why the entire APC machinery was deployed as a political battalion: all 32 APC Governors, a phalanx of Senators, an army of Ministers, and a staggering deployment of 15,000 police officers were marched into Osun.
Yet, despite this overbearing armada, *ADÉLÉKÈ prevailed.*
Yes, it is an incontrovertible truism that my party — the *African Democratic Congress* — trailed in the rear. But that was by design, not by defeat. It was a calculated stratagem: to announce our presence, to keep the torch of hope flickering, and to lay the groundwork for the presidential seismic shift in 2027.
Twenty-four hours to the polls, our governorship candidate, in concert with party leadership, embraced the politics of collaboration and convergence. That statesmanship galvanized an avalanche of support for Governor Adeleke, and it was palpably manifest in ADC strongholds across the state.
The most excruciating paradox, however, was the spectral absence of the Peoples Democratic Party. The PDP was an apparition — invisible, inaudible, and utterly inconsequential, as though they had abdicated the contest altogether.
Notwithstanding their ghostly presence, the deeper subtext is ominous: the Wike-led PDP faction may well boycott the 2027 general elections, just as they were effectively proscribed from this Osun contest. Should that prophecy materialize, then the revered Chief Priest of the Okunobo Shrine, Che Rex, may have been prophetic in dismissing the certificates of return doled out to their candidates as mere *“Oluwole certificates.”*
As it stands, the chickens are inexorably returning to roost.
*My most effusive congratulations to Governor Adeleke.*
You are, without equivocation, the people’s champion.
May the ADC yet harvest from the fruits of your resilience.
We must, and we shall, eclipse the ruling APC and usher in a new political dawn.
Elijah, the living ancestor (Adalekwu) writes from O’EJE Fortress, Otada-Otukpo.
