Osun State Governor, Senator Ademola Adeleke (PHOTO CREDIT: Senator Ademola Adeleke Jackson on Facebeook)
Adeleke’s victory may ultimately be judged by the quality of his second-term performance in office. But his political journey has already demonstrated an important truth about modern branding: people connect with people before they connect with policies.
I watched Ademola Adeleke’s interview with Seun Okinbaloye on Channels TV on Sunday, where he reflected on his victory at the Osun State gubernatorial election which held on Saturday August 15. In what turned out to be a two-horse race, Adeleke, the state governor, polled a total of 511,067 votes to defeat his closest rival, Bola Oyebamiji of the All Progressives Congress (APC), who polled 444,815 votes to secure a second term of four years in office.
Osun State became a “theatre of war” amid rising political tensions in what Azu Ishiekwene, Editor-in-Chief of Leadership newspaper, described as the outcome of a “perfect grudge match” between Adeleke and Adegboyega Oyetola, Minister of Marine and Blue Economy and former one-term governor of Osun State, in his column last week.
The election followed a tense campaign environment in which violence claimed lives and turned parts of Osun into a political battlefield. After Oyetola and his supporters successfully blocked Adeleke from joining APC from the People’s Democratic Party (PDP), the Osun State governor settled for Accord Party which was the platform he used to contest and achieved victory.
