Intense political competition and improved electoral technology helped strengthen the integrity of the 2026 Osun State governorship election, the Athena Election Observatory has said.
The observatory, in its preliminary assessment of the poll, said competition among the major political parties raised the logistical and structural barriers to large-scale electoral manipulation.
In a statement signed by its Media and Communications Officer, Paul Liam, and made available to journalists in Abuja on Monday, the AEO said organised political competition remained an important safeguard.
“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,” it said.
The observatory also noted a significant increase in voter registration and participation compared with the 2022 election.
According to the AEO, registered voters increased from 1,952,387 in 2022 to 2,339,544 in 2026, representing a 19.8 per cent rise.
It said accredited voters also increased from 827,218 to 1,010,684, while total votes cast rose from 823,124 to 1,005,800.
The accreditation rate, however, remained relatively stable, increasing from 42.37 per cent in 2022 to 43.20 per cent in 2026.
The observatory said the larger voting population and competitive mobilisation could make retail voter manipulation more difficult and costly.
It further observed that both major political camps increased their vote totals compared with the 2022 election.
Governor Ademola Adeleke’s votes rose from 403,371 in 2022 to 511,067 in 2026, while the APC increased its votes from 375,027 to 444,815.
The declared margin consequently increased from 28,344 votes in 2022 to 66,252 votes in 2026, according to the AEO.
On technology, the observatory said the deployment of the Bimodal Voter Accreditation System, immediate uploading of polling-unit results to IReV and structured digital data entries had improved the audit trail.
It, however, said gaps remained in the system.
The AEO identified upload delays, clearer public transmission timelines, system resilience and reconciliation of different digital records as areas requiring further improvement.
The observatory said its assessment would now move to a comprehensive independent post-election audit.
“We are not asking who should have won. Voters have voted, and INEC has exercised its statutory responsibility to declare the winner,” the AEO said.
“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?”
The organisation said the post-election audit would focus on assessing the accuracy, transparency and resilience of the electoral process.
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