Election observer groups have offered a measured verdict on Saturday’s Osun governorship election, commending the competitive environment and technological improvements while warning that Nigeria’s 2027 general elections face serious risks if oversight stops at the polling unit.
The Athena Election Observatory (AEO), in a preliminary statement released hours after INEC’s declaration, said the intensity of political competition itself served as a critical safeguard for electoral integrity.
“Organised political competition is expensive to build. It requires agents across polling units, a working knowledge of the electoral process, effective party organisation, and the capacity to track results independently from polling unit through successive levels of collation,” the AEO noted. “Where competing political parties possess these capabilities at scale, manipulating an election becomes harder to execute without detection.”
The group highlighted significant expansion in voter participation: registered voters grew by 19.8% from 1.95 million in 2022 to 2.34 million, while accredited voters rose from 827,218 to 1,010,684. Both leading candidates substantially increased their vote totals, a sign, the AEO said, of robust mobilisation. Yet the declared margin widened from 28,344 to 66,252 votes in favour of Governor Ademola Adeleke, who secured a second term.
On technology, the AEO observed that INEC’s BVAS accreditation, IReV uploads, and structured result entry are “increasingly creating an auditable trail from the polling unit,” though gaps persist in upload delays, system resilience, and reconciliation across digital records.
The group stressed that election night is only the beginning: “We now move to the more rigorous work of post-election audit: completing the polling-unit dataset, obtaining BVAS accreditation data and Forms EC8B-E, and reconciling the electoral record from polling unit through successive levels of collation to INEC’s final declaration.” The AEO’s central question, it said, is: “Does the complete electoral record support the declared result? That is the test of electoral integrity.”
Meanwhile, the Rule of Law and Accountability Advocacy Centre (RULAAC) has issued a sharp electoral security advisory, urging stakeholders to draw lessons from the Osun experience and expand their monitoring beyond polling booths ahead of 2027. In a statement signed by Executive Director Okechukwu Nwanguma, RULAAC cited reflections by former INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner Emeka Ononamadu, who raised concerns over the lack of verifiable police deployment lists and the difficulty of knowing whether security personnel at collation centres are genuine and properly assigned.
“The electoral process does not end when voters cast their ballots,” Nwanguma said. “The movement of results and election materials through counting, transportation and collation remains vulnerable to manipulation.” RULAAC warned that political actors could exploit or manufacture insecurity to disrupt counting or force the relocation of collation, and called for rigorous documentation of every security decision. “Whenever election results or materials are moved under security protection, the security chain should be properly documented to ensure accountability.”
The group outlined a checklist for civil society and observers ahead of 2027: monitor the movement and custody of election materials, security deployments, claims of violence used to disrupt collation, access of party agents and observers to collation centres, discrepancies between results at different stages, and the identities of officials making critical decisions. “The central question in investigating electoral incidents should be: ‘Who did what, at what stage, with what authority, and with what effect on the integrity of the election?’” Nwanguma said.
RULAAC cautioned against automatically blaming INEC for every infraction, but also stressed that the commission must not be absolved where evidence establishes its responsibility. The group urged all stakeholders—INEC, security agencies, political parties, observers, civil society and the media—to “remain vigilant throughout the entire electoral chain.”
“Protecting Nigeria’s democracy in 2027 would require stakeholders to protect the voter, protect the ballot, protect the result and protect the chain of custody,” RULAAC warned. “Do not stop watching when voting stops.”
The official results, announced by INEC Returning Officer Prof. Joshua Ogunwole, showed Adeleke of the Accord Party polling 511,067 votes, defeating APC’s Bola Oyebamiji who garnered 444,815 votes, while ADC’s Najeem Salaam came third with 17,180. Total valid votes were 985,079, with 20,721 rejected and 1,005,800 total votes cast. Adeleke won 19 of the 30 local government areas.
The European Union Support to Democratic Governance in Nigeria Election Observation Hub reported 323 electoral offences and irregularities and 38 security incidents across observed polling units, though no widespread violence was recorded. Both observer groups have now shifted focus to the post-election audit and the lessons for 2027, underscoring that the integrity of Nigeria’s electoral system depends on transparency and accountability at every stage of the chain.
