Governor Ademola Adeleke’s growing enthusiasm for President Bola Tinubu deserves more than a passing political shrug. Something has changed, and the people of Osun are entitled to know what it is. The economic hardship Adeleke once acknowledged has not disappeared; the controversies over federal actions affecting Osun have not been erased; and only recently did he accuse APC chieftains of perpetrating political violence. At the same time, Tinubu “looked the other way.” Yet today, his language about the president is increasingly warm and accommodating. For those of us from Osun, that shift deserves serious scrutiny.
I have followed these disputes closely and worked alongside attorneys and others concerned about the state to explain to our readers the consequences of the local government fund crisis. We did so because the issue affected workers, pensioners, local administration, and communities across Osun. It was never merely an argument between Abuja and Osogbo; real people were living with the consequences. If those grievances were serious enough to demand public outrage, then they should not quietly disappear now that the political temperature has changed. Adeleke’s own words make that contradiction difficult to ignore.
On May 1, 2025, Adeleke acknowledged that “the economic situation has not been easy for the citizenry.” He was describing what ordinary Osun families already knew from the marketplace, the filling station, and their monthly household bills. Food prices were rising, transportation was becoming more expensive, purchasing power was shrinking, and businesses were struggling with operating costs. Yet by June 2026, Adeleke was describing Tinubu as “our son, father, and leader” and declaring his support for the president’s 2027 re-election “unshaken and total.” The hardship had not suddenly disappeared between those two moments, and what he said as the Osun election approached made the contrast even harder to miss.
On August 3, Adeleke accused APC chieftains of perpetrating political violence while Tinubu “looked the other way,” warned against a repeat of the political crisis of 1983, and appealed directly to the President to act. Those were not casual campaign remarks; they placed responsibility before a president whom Adeleke clearly believed had the power to restrain members of his political family. At that moment, Tinubu was not treated as some distant figure unconnected to the conduct of the APC. Adeleke clearly believed that political responsibility traveled upward to the president. That same standard should apply when the circumstances are more comfortable.
Tinubu is the president produced by the APC and arguably its most influential political figure. Shortly before the Osun election, he brought leading Osun APC figures to Abuja to close ranks behind their candidate, showing how personally invested he was in his party’s fortunes in the state. Adeleke, therefore, cannot plausibly hold Tinubu responsible enough to intervene when APC actions threaten him but detached enough to escape political responsibility when those same actions become inconvenient to discuss. Tinubu cannot be separated from the APC whenever doing so becomes politically useful. The controversy over Osun’s local government funds makes that point even more difficult to avoid.
Adeleke’s government said more than ₦130 billion belonging to Osun councils had been withheld and described the consequences in grave terms. Those of us who argued the legal, constitutional, and democratic implications to our readers did not do so because we wanted another political fight. We did so because local workers, pensioners, and communities were caught in the middle and because the dispute raised fundamental questions about federal power and grassroots democracy. If Adeleke believed the matter was serious enough to mobilize public sympathy, he should tell us whether it has now been resolved or merely pushed aside. That question became even more pressing this week.
On August 22, Newspot Nigeria reported that the EFCC had lifted restrictions on Osun State government accounts after President Tinubu had earlier directed the commission to return to court and seek to vacate the freezing order. The accounts were frozen on August 5, just days before the governorship election, and Adeleke’s administration argued that the move could cripple government activity during a politically sensitive period. Tinubu later said he was “deeply embarrassed” by the timing and intervened, while the eventual lifting of the restriction restored access to the funds without ending the underlying investigation. That intervention may explain some of Adeleke’s gratitude, but it also raises another question.
If the president could direct the EFCC to seek the lifting of the restriction, how persuasive is the argument that Tinubu should be treated as entirely separate from federal actions that affect Osun? The same episode that may have brought Adeleke closer to Tinubu also demonstrates just how much political weight presidential intervention can carry. And yes, that immediately raises another institutional question: should an anti-graft commission not be able to operate independently of political direction in the first place? The EFCC Act gives the president significant appointment and removal powers over the commission’s leadership, while international reviewers have previously raised concerns about its institutional independence. But that is a discussion for another day.
I recently had an argument with my publisher after he suggested that we should show support for Tinubu. When I asked why, he said Tinubu is Yoruba. I reminded him that he was the same person who had complained about the astronomical rise in the cost of living, told me he was spending about ₦20,000 a day to fuel his generator, and repeatedly lamented the suffering across the country. I asked whether those conditions had changed or whether leadership should suddenly be judged by ethnicity rather than results. The exchange stayed with me because it exposed how easily identity can begin to replace performance as the measure of leadership.
I had a similar discussion with one of the founders of the Isọkan Yoruba group in the United States, someone President Tinubu knows. I argued again that being Yoruba cannot, by itself, be a sufficient reason to support any political leader, particularly when citizens are still living with the consequences of that leader’s policies. His response was that perhaps I saw the issue differently because I have very close friendships across ethnic lines. I found that observation revealing, because it suggests how easily political judgment can become filtered through ethnic proximity rather than through the common experience of citizenship. That is precisely why the argument must return to performance.
A president does not become more effective because he shares our language, ancestry, or region. A Yoruba family struggling to feed itself does not suffer less because the president is Yoruba, just as a business owner does not pay a lower fuel bill because the man in Aso Rock comes from the same part of the country. If the policies are working, make the case for them; if they are not, ethnicity should not be used as a defense. Adeleke’s own mixed Yoruba and Calabar background should make that argument particularly unnecessary. Leadership should be judged by what it delivers, and there are democratic lessons worth importing along with the development ideas leaders admire abroad.
Adeleke has spent enough time around the United States to know that democracy is not the same thing as political obedience. I remember hearing him at Uncle Dele Momodu’s leadership speaking event talk about Atlanta’s famous “Spaghetti Junction” around I-285 and his desire to replicate something similar in Osun. There is nothing wrong with borrowing an infrastructure idea that impressed him abroad; good ideas should travel. But democratic values should travel too. If we can import the idea of an American interchange into Osun, surely we can also import the democratic culture that allows public officials to disagree with powerful political leaders, resist pressure, and put institutions above partisan convenience. The infrastructure should not be the only lesson we bring home from America, and Georgia itself offers a useful example.
After the 2020 American presidential election, Republican Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger resisted pressure from Republican President Donald Trump to alter the outcome, while Republican Governor Brian Kemp also refused demands he believed were unlawful. Neither man stopped being a Republican because he said no to a Republican president. Their loyalty to the party did not cancel their responsibility to institutions, law, and voters. More importantly, Kemp’s political career did not collapse because he resisted Trump. The people of Georgia, a state Adeleke is hardly unfamiliar with, returned Kemp to office in 2022 despite that very public confrontation. That is a useful reminder that standing up to a powerful leader does not automatically mean political suicide.
Whatever one thinks of Trump’s policies, including his hardline approach to immigration, opposition parties, courts, state governments, Congress, and other institutional checks mean presidential power is not simply translated into policy without resistance or scrutiny. Some measures are challenged, delayed, narrowed, or blocked, and that friction is not a defect in democracy; it is part of how democracy protects itself from excessive concentration of power. Without competing institutions and political forces, the United States would look very different. Nigeria should, therefore, be wary of mistaking one-party dominance or political conformity for national cohesion. That is precisely the democratic danger Adeleke should consider before helping to normalize political uniformity.
If every governor, major politician, and important political tendency eventually feels compelled to line up behind whoever controls Abuja, democratic pluralism begins to lose its meaning. Democracy needs opposition, disagreement, and leaders willing to say no when the interests of their people or the integrity of institutions demand it. A country in which everyone must join the same political train is not necessarily more stable; it may simply become less accountable. Adeleke has repeatedly presented himself as a democrat, and that claim should include a willingness to preserve political independence even while maintaining a working relationship with the president. The distinction between cooperation and absorption, therefore, matters.
Tinubu naturally wants to broaden his coalition ahead of 2027, and there is nothing unusual about that. Every politician wants more allies, more governors, and more political structures working in their favor. But a president seeking another term also needs vessels to carry that agenda into places where his party has struggled, and Adeleke now risks appearing to have volunteered himself for that role. Cooperation with the federal government is one thing, but becoming a convenient vehicle for another politician’s electoral project is another. Adeleke should be careful not to surrender the independence that made Osun voters see him as an alternative in the first place, particularly because Nigerian politics has already produced an uncomfortable phrase for this kind of political migration.
In January 2019, then APC National Chairman Adams Oshiomhole famously told defectors at an APC rally that “once you join the APC, all your sins are forgiven.” The remark became political shorthand for the suspicion that joining the ruling party could wash away yesterday’s quarrels or accusations, even though Oshiomhole later said the comment had been twisted and was not a declaration that corrupt politicians would escape accountability. That history is exactly why Adeleke should be careful not to create the appearance that his new warmth toward Tinubu is about seeking political absolution.
Adeleke thanked Tinubu for what he described as “strong support for a free and fair election,” but that description deserves closer examination. This was an electoral season in which people died, others were injured, property was destroyed, and serious allegations of intimidation and violence were made. Adeleke himself had complained before the vote that people were being killed and maimed, and after the election he acknowledged the deaths and said he wished the police had done more. If those were the circumstances, what precisely is Tinubu being thanked for?
A president should not need personal applause simply because an election was not overturned by federal power. Free and fair elections are not presidential gifts to governors or voters; they are the minimum democratic standard. Where deaths, violence, security failures, and other questionable incidents surround an election, celebrating the president for allowing the process to proceed risks lowering that standard rather than defending it. Adeleke cannot spend the campaign warning that democracy is under threat and then, after victory, treat the absence of outright subversion as an extraordinary presidential favor. That only deepens the questions surrounding his political turn.
Perhaps relations with Abuja have improved, or perhaps Adeleke genuinely believes the president’s economic program will eventually produce better results. Any of those arguments can be made, and Nigerians can judge them for themselves. But they must be made honestly and supported by evidence because enthusiastic endorsement without explanation leaves too much room for suspicion. Political memory is not as short as politicians sometimes hope, especially when yesterday’s complaints remain fresh in the minds of the people who lived through them.
People remember who complained when the pressure was greatest, who condemned federal actions, and who asked citizens to endure difficult policies. They also notice when the same voices suddenly become enthusiastic supporters after an election has been won. Governor Adeleke should explain that transition before his opponents do it for him, because otherwise the accusation will write itself: political survival, gratitude to Abuja, surrender to a larger political agenda, or an attempt to have yesterday’s political sins forgiven. None of those descriptions may be fair, but silence will make them harder to dismiss. Adeleke can prevent that by simply letting the Osun people know what changed.
Governor Ademola Adeleke has the right to support whomever he chooses. Still, that freedom does not relieve him of the responsibility to explain a political turn that seems difficult to reconcile with his previous complaints, warnings, and acknowledgment of the hardship facing the people of Osun. A governor who claims to believe in democracy should be able to support a president without surrendering his independence to question him, challenge his party, and defend Osun when necessary. If Adeleke’s assessment of Tinubu has genuinely changed, he should tell us what produced that change and what benefits ordinary people can now see. Otherwise, the question at the heart of this debate will remain unanswered: did the policies change, did the suffering ease, or did Governor Adeleke’s politics change?
By Abidemi Adebamiwa
(Ripples)