Political competition, technology safeguarded Osun poll — Election observatory group

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The Athena Election Observatory has said intense political competition and technological upgrades deployed by the Independent National Electoral Commission helped safeguard electoral integrity during the recently concluded Osun State governorship election.

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The Athena Election Observatory is an independent electoral integrity initiative established by the Athena Centre for Policy and Leadership, an Abuja-based think tank founded by former Aviation Minister, Osita Chidoka.

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The Osun State governorship election was held on Saturday, August 15, with Ademola Adeleke of the Accord Party emerging as the winner with 511,067 votes, defeating the APC candidate, Bola Oyebamiji, who scored 444,815 votes.

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The observatory, in its preliminary assessment of the election released on Monday and signed by its Media and Communications Officer, Paul Liam, said the rivalry among major political parties increased the logistical and structural difficulties of manipulating the poll on a large scale.

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“Organised political competition is itself an important safeguard for electoral integrity. Where competing political parties possess capabilities at scale including agents across polling units, working knowledge of the electoral process, and the capacity to track results independently manipulating an election becomes much harder to execute without detection,”AEO said.

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The observatory also highlighted a substantial increase in the size of the electorate compared with the 2022 governorship election, saying the growth could make retail vote buying less effective and more costly.

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According to its analysis, registered voters increased from 1,952,387 in 2022 to 2,339,544 in 2026, representing a 19.8 per cent rise. Accredited voters also increased from 827,218 in 2022 to 1,010,684 in 2026, while total votes cast rose from 823,124 to 1,005,800.

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However, the accreditation rate remained broadly stable, increasing marginally from 42.37 per cent in 2022 to 43.20 per cent in 2026.

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The AEO said the combination of an expanding voting population and stable accreditation rates suggested that a larger and competitively mobilised electorate could dilute the effectiveness of retail voter manipulation on election day.

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It also noted that both leading political camps significantly increased their vote totals compared with 2022.

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Adeleke of the Peoples Democratic Party increased his votes from 403,371 in 2022 to 511,067 in 2026, while the All Progressives Congress increased its vote count from 375,027 to 444,815.

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Despite the increased mobilisation by both camps, the declared margin widened from 28,344 votes in 2022 to 66,252 votes in 2026, according to the observatory.

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On technology, the AEO said INEC had made notable progress through the deployment of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, immediate uploads of polling-unit results to the INEC Result Viewing portal and structured digital data entries.

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It said the measures were creating a more transparent and auditable paper trail, although infrastructure and transparency gaps remained.

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The observatory identified upload delays, the need for clear public transmission timelines, overall system resilience and cross-reconciliation of disparate digital records as areas requiring further technical and institutional improvements.

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The AEO said its assessment would now move into a comprehensive independent post-election audit, stressing that the declaration of a winner should not mark the end of scrutiny.

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“We are not asking who should have won. Voters have voted, and INEC has exercised its statutory responsibility to declare the winner. We are asking a different question: How resilient, transparent, and accurate is the structural chain of collation when subjected to total digital and declared results?”

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