Osun poll: Adeleke camp panics as IReV results upload stalls

The camp of Osun State Governor Ademola Adeleke has raised fresh concerns over the governorship election after the Independent National Electoral Commission stopped uploading results to its Result Viewing Portal.

As of 10:30pm on Saturday, 3,292 of the 3,763 expected polling unit results had been uploaded to IReV, according to checks by THE STAR. The figure represents 87.48 per cent of the results.

The last upload recorded on the portal was at 8:48:08pm.

The development came as the collation of results continued and Adeleke maintained an early lead over his closest rival, Bola Oyebamiji of the All Progressives Congress.

Reacting to the situation, Adeleke appealed to President Bola Tinubu to intervene and ensure that security agencies deployed for the election did not allow the process to be compromised.

The governor alleged that attempts were being made to disrupt collation in parts of the state, urging the police, Army, DSS, NSCDC and other security agencies to protect the collation process.

He also called on INEC to complete the exercise and ensure that the votes cast by Osun residents were reflected in the final result.

The governor’s campaign organisation, the Imole Campaign Council, went further by alleging that there was an attempt to engineer an inconclusive election.

The council, in a statement signed by its Media and Publicity Committee Chairman, Rep. Bamidele Salam, alleged that APC leaders and some governors were behind the purported move.

It also claimed that ballot boxes had been seized at some polling units and called for the arrest of those responsible.

The campaign council urged security agencies to tighten security around collation centres and appealed to local and international observers to monitor the process.

Afrobeats singer David Adeleke, popularly known as Davido, also weighed in on the development, demanding that INEC upload the outstanding results.

“UPLOAD THE REST OF THE RESULTS,” he posted on X.

He also warned against allowing the Osun election to become inconclusive and called for the protection of the electoral mandate.

INEC had not responded to the allegations or the calls for the immediate completion of the uploads as of the time of filing this report.

Meanwhile, results already collated continued to put Adeleke ahead.

Figures from 303 of Osun’s 332 wards showed Adeleke with 177,572 votes, while Oyebamiji had 158,588 votes. Najeem Salaam of the African Democratic Congress was a distant third with 5,917 votes.

The figures represented 50.5 per cent for Adeleke, 45.1 per cent for Oyebamiji and a much smaller share for Salaam.

A total of 361,500 voters had been accredited out of 845,100 registered voters in the affected wards, representing a 42.8 per cent turnout. Valid votes stood at 351,500, while 7,200 ballots were rejected.

Adeleke also recorded a landslide at his own polling unit in Ede North, where he secured 421 votes against Oyebamiji’s 29 and Salaam’s one vote.

Only 457 of the 1,082 registered voters at the unit cast their ballots before voting ended at about 4:15pm.

With hundreds of polling unit results still outstanding, attention remained focused on the collation centres and the completion of INEC’s electronic results upload before the final winner is declared.