The results of the August 15 governorship election in Ikire, Irewole Local Government Area of Osun State, where the All Progressives Congress (APC) polled 29,972 votes as against the Accord Party’s 10,934, are a confirmation that the candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Asiwaju Munirudeen Bola Oyebamiji, is more popular in the local government than the talkative Director-General of the Ademola Adeleke Campaign Council, Senator Lere Oyewumi.
Oyewumi is also the Deputy Minority Leader of the Senate, a position he believed he could use its influence to mobilize the people of Ikire against Oyebamiji.
Oyebamiji, popularly called AMBO, is a son of the soil like Oyewumi, but going by the boastful utterances of Oyewumi, one would have believed that the Accord chieftain had some magic wand to deliver the town to Governor Ademola Adeleke. He failed fantastically to deliver.
AMBO did not only win in all the 11 wards in Irewole Local Government, he equally pummeled Lere Oyewumi in his Ward 9, polling 75.1% of the votes there.
This is not the first time Akogun Lere Oyewumi would fail to deliver his local government in a governorship election. In 2022, APC recorded 18,198 votes, while his party, PDP then, polled 14,216 votes, a margin of 3,982 votes.
Even in the 2014 governorship election, when he was the Director-General of the Otunba Iyiola Omisore campaign, his candidate lost woefully in the town to Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola, the candidate of the APC.
APC won Irewole with a margin of 7,998 votes, polling 18,328 votes as against PDP’s 10,330 votes.
Oyewumi has been a local government chairman in the town in the past, but despite this privilege of leading the people there, he has always struggled to win even in elections that concern him. In the 2023 senatorial election, he had to rely on votes from Ede, hometown of Governor Ademola Adeleke, to become the senator, a development suggesting that he is resented at home, ostensibly because of his poor performance as local government chairman.
Prelude to the 2026 gubernatorial election, he activated a movement called “Konko Jabele”, meaning that indigenes of the state should prioritize political affiliation over community interest. Oyewumi vigorously campaigned against the emergence of Oyebamiji AMBO, but despite the plot, AMBO triumphed in his hometown, indicating that the former NIWA chief is a more acceptable political figure in the town.
Oyewumi will be seeking a renewal of his Senate mandate in January 2027, but if the “Konko Jabele” politics that he initiated in the 2026 election is elevated and replicated, from all indications, he is likely to lose in his hometown of Ikire.
