Ademola Adeleke earned a well-deserved victory in the just concluded Osun governorship election.
The part played by the Governor-elect’s pedigree is not widely acknowledged in this victory.
First, Adeleke reaped from the goodwill of his late brother, Isiaka Adeleke, a former Governor of the state and prominent member of the APC before his sudden death in Abeokuta in 2017.
Ademola was a victim of in-house politics by a powerful faction of the party which schemed him out of the party’s governorship ticket, forcing him to seek shelter under the rival PDP. Even at that, the APC used federal might to muscle him out of victory, when he won the closely fought election that brought Gboyega Oyetola, a cousin of the powerful APC chieftain, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, to power four years ago.
In Osun state, the Adeleke family is much more popular than Tinubu’s political family. Ademola Adeleke worked hard relentlessly to sustain his popularity until this election.
His capacity to leverage his family goodwill, financial clout, and the grassroots mobilization of his superstar nephew, Davido, combined to defeat the hapless incumbent whose bitter feud with Rauf Aregbesola, the influential former Governor and party stalwart, helped to set the stage for the victory of the whimsical Ademola Adeleke to ride to power.
That’s something for the APC to reflect upon.
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