Ademola Adeleke wins Osun guber poll, 30 years after elder brother was elected first civilian governor
Senator Ademola Adeleke, the father of music stars Adebayo ‘B-Red’ Adeleke and Sina ‘Sina Rambo’ Adeleke, has been declared the winner of the Osun governorship election on Sunday, July 17, 2022, after polling 403,371 votes to defeat the incumbent governor Isiaka Oyetola.
The Vice Chancellor of the University of Lagos, Prof. Oluwatoyin Ogundipe, who is the Returning Officer for the election, announced that Adeleke of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) defeated Oyetola of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who polled 375,027 votes in a keenly contested race.
Senator Ademola is the younger brother of Adedeji Adeleke, the father of music star Davido.
His emergence as Osun state governor is coming exactly 30 years after his elder brother Senator Isiaka Adeleke made history in 1992 as the first civilian governor of the state after the state was carved out of the old Oyo state in August 1991.
Isiaka Adeleke, who was later elected Senator in 2007 under the PDP and in 2015 under the APC, had been tipped as the favourite to succeed Rauf Aregbesola as governor in 2018 but died of a heart attack a year before the election in April 2017.
The death of Isiaka Adeleke in April 2017 threw Ademola into the political space. Ademola, who had never run for a political office before his brother’s death, inherited his elder brother’s political structure and was elected in 2017 to complete his brother’s term in the Senate.
He also won the PDP ticket and ran for the Osun governorship poll in 2018 but lost to the APC after a rerun. Although he was declared the winner by the election petition tribunal, his victory was overturned by the Appeal Court based on technicalities.
After the loss, Ademola returned to the United States to study after his academic qualifications were used as a political weapon against him in the 2018 governorship election.
“I went back to school when there were controversies surrounding my educational qualifications,” he told Channels TV.
“I went back there very boldly and studied with people that should be my grandchildren. Today, I thank God I’m more educated and ready to rule Osun State.”
