When, yesterday morning, the Vice Chancellor of Obafemi Awolowo University (OAU), Prof. Bamitale Omole, announced the final results of the governorship election in Osun State, not a few people heaved a sigh of relief.
According to the erudite scholar, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola of the All Progressives Congress (APC), scored a total votes of 394, 684 to beat his arch rival, Senator Iyiola Omisore of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to a second position with 292, 747 votes.
In retrospect, the battle for the soul of Osun, as it concerned Omisore, started as far back as 1999 during the advent of this democratic dispensation. Since then, he has left nobody in doubt that he has the passion to serve the state reputed to be of the Living Spring. And for Aregbesola, the battle started, perhaps, in 2006/2007. And like Omisore, he has since been telling whoever cares to listen that he harbours a burning desire to turn the state around for good. The two political combatants then started oiling their political machinery towards the battle ahead.
While Omisore was warming up to succeed his former boss, Prince Olagunsoye Oyinlola, on a platter of gold in 2011, Aregbesola had earlier thrown his hat into the ring in 2007 to slug it out with Oyinlola, with a view to wresting power from him before Omisore could cause any electoral havoc to his ambition.
But as it turned out, the electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), declared Oyinlola winner and Aregbesola and his then Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), cried blue murder. The legal battle to redress the perceived electoral injustice dragged on for three and a half years before an Appeal Court sitting in Ibadan, in November 2010, returned the mandate to Aregbesola. That threw spanners in the political permutations of Omisore, whose posters and billboards had been conspicuously displaced across the state.
So, with Aregbesola’s ascendancy to the governorship in November 2010, the political aspiration of Omisore, who was then in the Senate, was put in jeopardy as Aregbesola’s power of incumbency swept all elected PDP members out of all the elected offices in the state in 2011. Starting from the local government level, state House of Assembly to the National Assembly, Aregbesola’s political influence overwhelmed the PDP and. therefore, he succeeded in replacing office holders with ACN materials.
THE RESULT
LG APC PDP LP
Ede North 15, 403 10, 427 54
Ifelodun 17, 447 12, 442 96
Ayedaade 12, 801 11, 255 137
Obokun 11, 696 8, 617 84
Iwo 20, 827 15, 493 790
Irewole 18, 328 10, 330 117
Osogbo 39, 983 11,513 673
Olorunda 26, 551 8, 483 410
Atakumosa East 9, 287 6, 294 120
Ife South 7, 325 12, 495 146
Ejigbo 17, 700 12, 495 391
Ifedayo 4, 225 3, 982 17
Boluwaduro 4, 891 5, 035 19
Ilesa East 16, 106 5, 913 44
Odo Otin 11, 950 12, 902 518
Ilesa West 15, 427 5, 449 32
Boripe 12, 723 9, 344 249
Ila Orangun 10, 825 7, 916 43
Oriade 12, 523 10, 214 136
Orolu 8, 558 6, 786 440
Atakumosa West 6, 928 5, 142 76
Ede South 11, 738 7, 462 46
Irepodun 13, 314 7, 386 343
Ife Central 9, 680 24, 555 102
Ife East 13, 821 20, 831 297
Olaoluwa 7, 927 4, 963 2, 476
Ife North 8, 673 9, 841 265
Isokan 9, 758 10, 028 197
Egbedore 10, 615. 7, 024 157
Ayedire 8, 724 7, 813 423
TOTAL 394,694 294, 747 8, 898.
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