Political parties may select candidates, it’s the people that select governments, By Akeem Bello

The Osun election therefore represents something larger than an electoral victory for Ademola Adeleke. It is another demonstration that the Nigerian voter can separate party from candidate, federal politics from state politics and elite preference from personal political judgement. This is what I mean by Nigerians gradually taking over governance. I do not mean that citizens will replace elected institutions. I mean that they are gradually reclaiming the political power that democracy already gives them.

The All Progressives Congress (APC) lost the Osun governorship election long before the first ballot was cast. In my assessment, it lost the election substantially on the day it decided how its candidate would emerge. This is not to suggest that the mode of candidate selection mechanically determines the outcome of a general election. Elections are far more complicated than that. My argument, based on my experience as a teacher of politics and my continuing engagement with electoral politics, political parties and democratic governance, is that the manner in which APC produced its candidate created an avoidable structural weakness which the party struggled to overcome until election day. The Osun election should therefore be understood not merely as a contest between Ademola Adeleke and Bola Oyebamiji, but as an important political lesson about intra-party democracy, elite bargaining, candidate legitimacy, electoral accountability and the growing independence of the Nigerian voter.

To understand the outcome, one must return to the APC’s candidate selection process. There were initially nine aspirants in the race: Bola Oyebamiji, Mulikat Abiola Jimoh, Senator Iyiola Omisore, former Deputy Governor Benedict Olugboyega Alabi, Dotun Babayemi, Dr Akinade Akanmu Ogunbiyi, Senator Babajide Omoworare, Kunle Adegoke (SAN), and Babatunde Haketer Oralusi. The screening committee subsequently cleared only Oyebamiji and Mulikat Jimoh, while Omisore, Alabi, Babayemi, Ogunbiyi, Omoworare, Adegoke and Oralusi were disqualified over the party’s nomination requirements. The process generated controversy, and the disqualified aspirants questioned aspects of the screening exercise.

Eventually, seven of the aspirants, Benedict Alabi, Dotun Babayemi, Akin Ogunbiyi, Babajide Omoworare, Kunle Adegoke, Babatunde Haketer Oralusi and Mulikat Abiola Jimoh, stepped down and agreed to support Oyebamiji after meeting President Bola Tinubu in Abuja. Senator Iyiola Omisore was notably absent from that meeting and had previously rejected the circumstances surrounding his disqualification. The APC subsequently affirmed Oyebamiji through a voice vote rather than a competitive primary in which members or delegates chose between competing candidates. President Tinubu congratulated Oyebamiji and described the process in terms of unity and reconciliation.

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There is nothing inherently wrong with consensus in political parties. Consensus can prevent destructive competition, protect party unity and create opportunities for reconciliation. The problem begins when consensus among political elites is assumed to be equivalent to consent among the wider membership. Those are not necessarily the same thing. A political aspirant can personally agree to support a consensus candidate while thousands of people who built their political expectations around that aspirant remain unconvinced. An elite settlement may therefore end a quarrel among leaders without necessarily healing the political grievances that exist among their supporters. That distinction, in my view, is central to understanding the APC’s experience in Osun.

The Problem With Party Supremacy

Political science has long established that candidate selection is not merely an internal administrative exercise. Hazan and Rahat (2010), in their influential work Democracy within Parties, demonstrate that the method through which candidates are selected determines who exercises political power within a party. Their concept of the “selectorate” is particularly useful. A selectorate can be narrow and elite controlled or broad and inclusive. The narrower the selectorate, the greater the capacity of a small political group to determine who emerges as a candidate.

This is why the Nigerian expression “party supremacy” requires careful examination. In a genuine democratic party, party supremacy should mean the supremacy of the party constitution, its rules and legitimate institutional decisions. It should not become a convenient expression for the supremacy of a handful of leaders over ordinary party members. Political parties need leaders, but leaders do not constitute the entire party. The ward member, the local government organiser, the grassroots mobiliser and the ordinary party supporter are also part of the political organisation. When they are repeatedly excluded from meaningful participation in decisions that determine who represents them, a party may remain organisationally intact while gradually losing democratic ownership.

Robert Michels’ famous analysis of political organisations is relevant here. In Political Parties, Michels (1911) formulated what later became known as the iron law of oligarchy and famously observed that “who says organisation, says oligarchy”. His argument was that organisations naturally tend towards concentration of power in the hands of a relatively small leadership group. Michels was not writing about Nigeria, and his argument should not be mechanically transplanted into the APC experience. But his broader insight remains valuable: once political organisations become dominated by a small group that controls information, structures anddecision-makingg, the organisation can gradually become more responsive to its leadership than to its wider membership. That is the danger Nigerian political parties must confront.

Oyebamiji and the Burden of a Difficult Beginning

I do not believe it is intellectually fair to blame Oyebamiji personally for the APC’s defeat. He was a serious candidate who obtained 444,815 votes and won 11 of Osun’s 30 local government areas. Adeleke won 511,067 votes and 19 local government areas, giving him a margin of 66,252 votes. This was therefore a competitive election, not a political humiliation of the APC candidate.

My argument is about the circumstances surrounding Oyebamiji’s emergence. He inherited a party that had already experienced significant internal disagreements, factional competition and disputes over candidate selection. He became the consensus candidate after a process in which several aspirants withdrew, while another major aspirant, Omisore, remained outside the reconciliation meeting that produced the consensus. It would therefore be reasonable to describe Oyebamiji, politically speaking, as a product of a conflict ridden process, although that should never be interpreted as a judgement on his character or competence.

A candidate can be personally strong and still inherit the weaknesses of the process that produced him. This is one of the reasons candidate selection matters. The political baggage of a primary can follow a candidate into the general election. When reconciliation continues almost to election day, it suggests that the nomination process did not completely resolve the underlying conflict. A party that should be spending its final days consolidating its campaign, mobilising voters and communicating its message may instead find itself repairing internal fractures. That is not a recipe for electoral strength.

The Nigerian Voter Is Becoming More Sophisticated

The more profound lesson of Osun, however, lies beyond the APC. It lies with the voter. For too long, Nigerian political discourse has sometimes treated voters as extensions of political parties. Once a party chose its candidate, the assumption was that party supporters would simply follow. But the Nigerian electorate is becoming more sophisticated, and the Osun election provides another example of this development.

Adeleke himself offers a fascinating illustration. He openly endorsed President Bola Tinubu for a second term in 2027, even while contesting against the President’s party in the Osun governorship election. That means a voter could support Tinubu for President and Adeleke for governor without necessarily seeing any contradiction between the two choices. This is increasingly important in understanding Nigerian electoral behaviour. Voters can distinguish between national and subnational contests, between individual politicians and political parties, and between policy performance and partisan identity.

This argument resonates strongly with our own recent research. In The Ballots Without the Voters, Bello and Olaniyan (2026) argue that electoral participation in Nigeria cannot be adequately understood simply through voter registration. They demonstrate that voter education and political awareness interact with institutional conditions, including public trust, electoral credibility, administrative effectiveness and electoral security, to shape citizens’ engagement with the democratic process.

The relevance to Osun is obvious. A politically conscious voter is not necessarily a voter who follows the instruction of a party leader. Political consciousness may actually produce the opposite behaviour: the capacity to examine competing candidates, evaluate performance and make an independent electoral choice. In that sense, the growing sophistication of Nigerian voters may eventually become one of the strongest constraints on elite political manipulation.

Elections Are Not About Party Loyalty Alone

Anthony Downs (1957) provides another useful theoretical lens. His rational choice approach to political behaviour treats voters as actors who make choices based on their assessment of alternatives and perceived interests. While no rational choice model can fully capture the emotional, ethnic, religious, historical and social dimensions of Nigerian voting behaviour, Downs’ central insight remains useful: voters possess agency. They are not simply waiting for politicians to tell them what to do.

Electoral accountability provides another important perspective. Elections give citizens an opportunity to reward or punish governments. An incumbent governor therefore enters an election carrying both the advantages and burdens of incumbency. Adeleke was not asking voters to choose an unknown candidate. He was asking them to assess his record in office.

That means the APC’s defeat cannot be explained solely by its primary election. Adeleke’s incumbency, campaign organisation, personal popularity, political networks, policy record and relationship with the electorate must also be considered. The more convincing explanation is therefore an interaction of factors: APC’s internal weaknesses created an opportunity, while Adeleke’s political strengths enabled him to exploit that opportunity.

The People Won, but the Claim Must Be Carefully Made

I agree that “the people won”, but as a scholar I would qualify the statement. No serious assessment of an election should ignore the irregularities that may have occurred during the process. Reports around the Osun election raised concerns about vote buying, political inducement, violence and other electoral problems. These should not be dismissed simply because the final result was decisive.

At the same time, the existence of electoral imperfections does not automatically invalidate an election. The relevant question is whether the electorate was sufficiently able to exercise meaningful choice for the outcome to reflect the prevailing preference of voters. In Osun, the declared figures show a substantial difference between the two principal candidates. Adeleke received 511,067 votes, compared with Oyebamiji’s 444,815, producing a margin of 66,252 votes. He won 19 local government areas, while Oyebamiji won 11.

This is important because electoral legitimacy is not produced by the absence of every irregularity. It is produced by the combination of credible institutions, meaningful competition, voter choice and an outcome that can reasonably be connected to the ballots cast. Our recent work on electoral integrity, Bello, Akinlade and Olaniyan (2026), similarly places emphasis on the relationship between electoral institutions, security agencies and the integrity of the electoral process. The work is appropriately titled Guardians or Gatekeepers? Security Agencies and Nigeria’s Electoral Integrity.

The lesson is that Nigeria must continue to improve its electoral institutions while simultaneously recognising moments when the electorate succeeds in asserting its preference.

Tinubu and the Question of Political Neutrality

I also believe Nigerians should commend President Bola Tinubu for the manner in which the Osun election ultimately unfolded, but this argument must be made with intellectual caution. There is no verifiable evidence from which one can conclusively state that President Tinubu personally decided that Adeleke should win or deliberately instructed anyone to deliver the election to the incumbent governor. Such a claim would go beyond the available evidence.

There is, however, a legitimate political question about the extent to which the federal government chose not to use its enormous political influence to force an APC victory. President Tinubu had intervened directly in the APC’s internal process, bringing aspirants together and encouraging reconciliation around Oyebamiji. Yet, after the primary, the President did not publicly suggest that the APC’s nomination gave it an entitlement to win the general election. His public posture emphasised reconciliation and electoral process rather than an openly declared federal campaign to impose the APC candidate.

This creates an interesting political hypothesis. A smart politician does not necessarily seek to win every contest. Sometimes, the rational political strategy is to avoid fighting an election in which the cost of imposing an outcome may be greater than the benefit of winning it. If available intelligence suggested that the incumbent governor retained substantial support among the electorate, an attempt to overturn that preference through federal influence could have produced considerable political damage.

There is another important consideration. Adeleke had already publicly endorsed President Tinubu for a second term in 2027. Thus, from a strategic perspective, an Adeleke victory in Osun did not necessarily amount to a Tinubu political defeat. This does not prove that the President adopted such a calculation. It merely makes the hypothesis politically plausible. That distinction between evidence and inference is important.

Nigeria Should Watch the Anambra Lesson

The political developments around Anambra also provide a useful comparative reference, although the two elections should not be treated as identical. The broader lesson is that a President may sometimes benefit more from appearing above partisan electoral manipulation than from aggressively deploying federal influence to secure every state election for his party.

The strategic calculation is simple. A President’s principal electoral objective is national. Winning every governorship election is not necessarily essential to securing national political survival. In some circumstances, allowing an electorate to make its preferred choice may preserve the President’s broader legitimacy and political alliances.

This is why the Osun election may ultimately prove more complicated than a straightforward APC defeat. It could also represent a demonstration of strategic restraint by the federal political leadership. Again, that is an interpretation, not an established fact.

Nigerians Are Taking Back Their Political Power

This is what I mean when I say that Nigerians will increasingly “take over governance”. I am not predicting that President Tinubu will be defeated in 2027. I am not even suggesting that the Osun result should be interpreted as a national rejection of the President. In my assessment, none of the alternatives currently visible on the national political landscape has yet presented a sufficiently compelling proposition to make Tinubu’s re-election an obvious impossibility.

At the same time, supporting the President does not require one to support every action of his administration. His reforms may be directionally necessary in important respects, but they still require improvement, particularly in the way their costs and benefits are distributed across society. A mature political position should be able to support reform while demanding better implementation. It should be possible to support a President and simultaneously insist that elections must remain credible.

This is the political meaning of “taking back governance”. Nigerians are beginning to understand that politicians need their votes more than citizens need individual politicians. They are gradually recognising that political parties are vehicles for political competition, not owners of the electorate. They are beginning to understand that a party can nominate a candidate, but it cannot compel a citizen to vote for that candidate.

Our argument in Bello and Olaniyan (2026) about political awareness and civic competence is relevant here. Electoral participation becomes meaningful when citizens possess the capacity to understand the electoral process and exercise informed political choices, while institutions must provide an environment in which those choices can actually count.

Party Supremacy Must Not Become Elite Supremacy

This brings me back to the question of party supremacy. Political parties should be strong. They should have rules. Their members should respect legitimate decisions. But party supremacy cannot mean that a small number of leaders make decisions and then invoke party loyalty to prevent members from questioning those decisions.

Hazan and Rahat (2010) remind us that the question of who selects candidates is ultimately a question of who exercises power within the political organisation. The more inclusive the selection process, the broader the distribution of political influence. The more exclusive it becomes, the more power migrates towards the political elite.

This is the lesson APC and every other Nigerian political party should take seriously. Party leaders are custodians of political organisations. They are not owners of the electorate. The electorate remains sovereign.

APC Must Learn the Right Lesson

If APC responds to Osun merely by establishing another reconciliation committee, it will have missed the larger lesson. Reconciliation is necessary, but reconciliation without institutional reform is temporary. The party needs to examine why so many aspirants became aggrieved, whether its screening procedures are trusted by its members, whether its internal appeal mechanisms are credible and whether ordinary members genuinely believe they have a meaningful voice in choosing candidates.

The party must also understand that elite consensus and grassroots consensus are not the same thing. A political meeting in Abuja may produce harmony among senior politicians, but that harmony must eventually travel down to the ward and polling unit. A candidate cannot be politically owned by a party simply because the party leadership has issued a communiqué endorsing him.

Consensus works best when participants genuinely believe they had a fair opportunity to win. Otherwise, consensus can become little more than political theatre.

Oyebamiji Should Accept the Result

I believe Oyebamiji should concede and accept the result. This is not because he did not fight hard or because he was an unworthy candidate. The figures demonstrate that he remains a serious political actor. More than 444,000 Osun voters chose him, and he carried 11 local government areas.

But political careers are longer than individual elections. If Oyebamiji accepts the result with dignity, congratulates Adeleke and continues to participate constructively in democratic politics, he could actually strengthen his political profile. Concession is not necessarily weakness. In mature democracies, the ability to lose with dignity can be as important as the ability to win.

He should therefore resist the temptation to become permanently defined by the circumstances of his defeat. He has demonstrated that he has a substantial political constituency. The next task is to convert that constituency into a durable political career.

The Voter Is the Final Selectorate

The greatest lesson of Osun is therefore not simply that Adeleke won or that Oyebamiji lost. It is that Nigerian voters are becoming increasingly conscious of the power they possess.

Political parties choose candidates. Political leaders negotiate. Elites build coalitions. But voters choose governments. That distinction is the foundation upon which Nigeria’s democratic future must be built.

The old model of Nigerian politics assumed that the political elite would decide, political parties would organise, political godfathers would mobilise and voters would follow. That model has not disappeared, but it is weakening. Money still matters. Political structures still matter. Party machinery still matters. Incumbency still matters. Political networks still matter. Yet the voter is becoming increasingly difficult to treat as an obedient political instrument.

As a teacher of politics, this is the lesson I find most compelling in Osun. Political parties may control their primaries, but they do not control the general election. Political leaders may determine who carries the party’s flag, but they cannot determine who carries the people’s mandate. A party may insist that its decision is supreme, but the voter has the final decision. The APC should therefore look beyond the immediate defeat and ask a more fundamental question: did Osun reject Oyebamiji, or did Osun reject a political method? The answer may well be both. But the larger message is unmistakable:

Political parties may select candidates, but only the people can select governments.

Akeem Bello writes from Ado-Ekiti.