The dust from the last Osun governorship election has refused to settle, and if anything, the recriminations inside the APC are now louder than the campaign drums ever were. Under the banner of the “Osun Rescue Mission,” the Omisore camp has stepped forward with its most detailed indictment yet. It is not simply a victory lap for Governor Ademola Adeleke. It is a full counter-offensive aimed at former Governor Gboyega Oyetola, and a deliberate attempt to rewrite who takes responsibility for the party’s collapse. At its heart, the message is this: the APC did not lose in spite of sidelining Iyiola Omisore. It lost precisely because it did.
The foundation of the Omisore camp’s argument rests on legacy and political credibility. They reject outright the narrative that Omisore’s multiple attempts at the governorship amount to failure. Instead, they point to a 35-year political journey across Osun and Nigeria, and contrast it with what they derisively call Oyetola’s “16 years of political surrogacy.” In their telling, Oyetola’s only real credential is his relation to the President, and his rise to Chief of Staff is framed not as the product of grassroots work but as an appointment handed down from Abuja. “Let him show his street credibility, I’m certain he has none,” the statement challenges, insisting that Omisore has maintained political, humanitarian and professional investments in Osun without ever holding the governorship, and yet remains “celebrated everywhere in the country.” To drive the point home, they reach for history. Would anyone call the late Chief Obafemi Awolowo a failure because he never became President? The parallel is deliberate. It reframes persistence as statesmanship, and turns the criticism of Omisore back onto the accusers.
Beyond defending their principal, the Omisore camp is also claiming the role of vindicated prophet. They insist they warned party leaders during the primaries that turning the process into a “selection for a new boy on the block” was political suicide. “We told them Adeleke is too formidable to be confronted with a political neophyte,” they argue, invoking the Yoruba proverb _Ori to ma su opo ko ni je ki Olokunrun ye_ — a head destined to hit a rock will not be spared. Their warning went further into electoral arithmetic. The party, they said, needed a candidate with a base large enough to offset an inevitable deficit in Osun West and in Ede Federal Constituency in particular. That advice, they claim, was ignored due to a “failure mentality” among leaders who could not read Osun’s undercurrents. The results, in their view, proved the analysis correct. Adeleke swept Osun West by 45,000 votes, erasing the 17,000 margin Oyetola’s candidate managed in his narrow base. The rout did not stop there. In Osun Central, Oyetola’s home zone, Adeleke won 7 out of 10 local governments. In Osun East, the APC lost despite handing national tickets to what the camp calls “newcomers and strange bedfellows” — names like Sen. Fadahunsi, Hon. Wole Oke, Sanya Ominrin and Bimbo Ajilesoro — a move described as being “to the utter chagrin and detriment of foundation members.” Even the intervention of “influential Abuja power mongers” like Hope Uzodinma, who were allegedly used to sway the President, could not salvage the party at the polls.
What animates much of the counter-attack is a charge of arrogance. The Omisore camp paints the Oyetola-led APC as having become “power drunk with their influence in the Presidency,” and blames “abosi, greed, arrogance and an inordinate ambition to become a political emperor in Osun” for the party’s downfall. They cite specific moments that, in their telling, alienated voters. There was the boast that “one million Omisores cannot stop AMBO.” There was the State Chairman’s declaration at Ajo Ilode in Ile-Ife that “AMBO’s victory was a sine qua non regardless of whether Ife voted for him or not.” And there was a viral video clip where an APC figure told Adeleke directly: “no matter how many times you endorsed PBAT for second term you will be removed.” The camp dismisses the claim that APC could win without Omisore as “a fi bi eedi” — it ended in shame. To give their indictment moral weight, they deploy Yoruba elders’ wisdom: _”iru iro ni iborun”_ — birds of the same feathers flock together — and _”Olorun ko si lehin alabosi”_ — God is not with the backbiter.
The statement culminates in a moral and spiritual note. “But God who rules the affairs of men had other plans.” For the Osun Rescue Mission, the outcome is “good riddance to bad luck and poor governance,” and they say they “cannot wait to see their departure from Osun politics.”
Read critically, the Omisore camp is doing three things at once. First, it is absolving itself. By claiming they warned the party, they shift blame for the APC’s “colossal loss” away from their group. Second, it is delegitimizing Oyetola’s leadership as an imposition backed by Abuja rather than by Osun structures. Third, it is repositioning itself. The closing line — _”Adeleke la tele, awa o si number mu”_ — “we are following Adeleke, we are not forming numbers” — makes clear that having “bailed out of the sinking ship,” the camp is now openly aligning with the Adeleke administration.
In the end, this is not just a response to critics. It is an effort to own the narrative of the APC’s defeat ahead of Osun 2026. The Omisore camp wants history to record that the party fell not despite leaving them behind, but because it tried to do politics without the very structures and analysis they provided.
