The post-2026 public romance between Dr. Deji Adeleke, elder brother and chief financier of Governor Ademola Adeleke, and Senator Iyiola Omisore, the former APC National Secretary, is now being interpreted in Osogbo as more than friendship. It is being read as confirmation of two long-whispered allegations, that Omisore engaged in anti-party activities that contributed directly to the defeat of the APC in the 2026 governorship election, and that there is an underlying 2030 bargain in which Omisore was to quietly deliver Ife to the Adelekes in 2026 in exchange for the Adeleke dynasty delivering the governorship ticket to him in 2030 when Ademola Adeleke would have completed his two terms.
The body language makes the allegation difficult to dismiss. In the build-up to 2026, Omisore, who should have been a leading voice for his party’s candidate Adegboyega Oyetola, was conspicuously lukewarm in Ife, the four local government bloc that decides Osun elections. He did not mobilize, he did not attack the PDP, and Ife, which he claims to control, did not vote as an APC stronghold. For a former National Secretary of the ruling party, that silence is itself a statement, and for the Adeleke camp, which is strategically led by Deji the businessman, that silence was valuable enough to be rewarded with public embrace after victory.
On the surface, that alleged deal looks like political smartness for both sides. Omisore, who has contested for governor since 2014 and has never hidden his ambition, would have finally found a bridge out of APC irrelevance and into the dominant Adeleke family structure. He can claim he has what PDP needs, a foothold in Ife and a national profile that no other Ife politician possesses, and that by delivering Ife to Adeleke in 2026 he has earned a debt that Deji Adeleke, as a businessman who pays his obligations, must repay in 2030 with money and incumbency backing to secure the PDP ticket. That is the strength of his calculation, but it is a strength built on sand because it assumes Osun politics is only about a transaction between two men, and it ignores the permanent baggage that has always defined Omisore as a brand.
That baggage is his most crippling weakness and it is lifetime. Though he has never been found guilty by any court of law, Omisore is believed to have continued to suffer from a controversial personality tag that has followed him since the Bola Ige era, a tag that has been reinforced by his endless chain of defections from PDP to SDP in 2018 where he famously allied with Oyetola to deny Ademola Adeleke victory, to APC as National Secretary, and now allegedly working against the same APC. In Osun, that history has created a deep trust deficit. Voters in Osogbo, Iwo, Ijesha and even parts of Ede see him as a man whose loyalty is to his ambition alone, not to party or principle. When a politician is alleged to have committed anti-party against his own party to help the opposition win, he confirms to both sides that he is unreliable. Why would PDP, after 2030, trust that he would not betray them too? Beyond character, there is electoral math. Ife is only four local governments. To become governor you must win beyond Ife, and Omisore has never convincingly won outside his base. The controversial tag ensures he is loved in Ife but merely tolerated elsewhere, which is why he has failed in every previous governorship attempt despite his huge personal investment.
Omisore is cooking something for 2030 and his calculation is clear – with the governorship ticket expected to return to Ife/Ijesha, he could not get it in APC, he allegedly quietly worked for Accord Party in the last election while staying back himself, with 90% of his loyalists decamping to Accord to test his structure and keep his base intact. But the gamble is flawed because the same 2018 history that made him relevant now haunts him; after allying with Oyetola in 2018 to deny Ademola Adeleke victory, there is no way the Adeleke dynasty will trust him enough to hand him the PDP ticket in 2030, leaving him strategically homeless – rejected by APC, tolerated by Accord, and unforgiven by Adeleke
The only real opportunity that the alleged 2026 deal offers him is the PDP ticket itself. That is feasible if the Adeleke family decides to impose him. With Governor Ademola Adeleke as outgoing governor in 2030 and Deji Adeleke’s financial war chest behind him, Omisore could be cleared in a PDP primary that the Adelekes control. But a party ticket is not a governorship, especially in Osun where federal might has always been decisive, and this is where the deal meets its dead end in the form of two men, Tinubu and Oyetola. President Bola Tinubu is not just the leader of APC, he is a political strategist who does not forgive betrayal in his South-West home base, and under Article 21 of the APC constitution, anti-party is punishable by expulsion. A former National Secretary who allegedly worked against his own party to install PDP is the textbook definition of that offence. Tinubu cannot afford to allow Osun, a state in his own geopolitical zone, to be handed as a reward to a man who defeated his party, because it would signal to other APC leaders that betrayal pays. As long as Tinubu holds federal power, which runs beyond 2030 into 2031, Omisore will face the full weight of federal institutions, security, and patronage deployed to stop him.
Compounding that threat is Gboyega Oyetola, who is not just a former governor but Tinubu’s cousin, a serving Minister, and the undisputed leader of APC in Osun. Oyetola has lost Osun twice, and the second loss in 2026, if linked to Omisore’s alleged sabotage in Ife, becomes personal. He will not just contest 2030, he will make 2030 a revenge mission and a referendum on loyalty versus betrayal. Oyetola still controls the APC structure in Osun and he has the influence to ensure that APC fields an Ife candidate in 2030 specifically to cut Omisore’s only base and expose his lack of statewide appeal. Between Tinubu’s federal might and Oyetola’s local structure, the 2030 race will be framed not as Adeleke versus APC, but as a traitor who caused APC’s defeat versus the party’s redemption.
In that scenario, the Adeleke dynasty will face a hard business decision, which Deji Adeleke understands better than anyone. Sustaining Omisore in 2030 would mean going to war directly with Tinubu and Oyetola with a candidate carrying heavy baggage, risking the family’s entire political empire in Osun. The businessman in Deji will choose preservation over sentiment. He will drop Omisore to save the dynasty. The alleged anti-party that may have helped secure victory for the Adelekes in 2026 has therefore given Omisore a romance and a temporary relevance, but it has not given him a viable path to the governorship in 2030. It has instead confirmed his controversial tag and guaranteed that the two most powerful forces in Osun APC will unite to bury that ambition.
