The outcome of the Osun 2026 governorship election may have been settled, but questions over the credibility and completeness of the process are far from over.
With voter turnout reported at 43.4%, the election recorded a level of participation that stands high by recent Nigerian standards. For some observers, that turnout offers a powerful lesson: when citizens turn out in large numbers, it becomes harder to manipulate the will of the electorate.
But attention is now shifting to the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and its results portal, IReV.
Conversely, Atedo Peterside, a highly celebrated Nigerian entrepreneur, investment banker, and economist, has asked the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) to explain the prolonged delay in uploading the final results of the 2026 Osun State governorship election on its Results Viewing (IReV) portal.
Peterside’s concern centred on the pace of electronic transmission of polling-unit results, rather than the eventual declaration of Governor Ademola Adeleke as winner of the election.
On Saturday night, Peterside questioned why the upload of results on the IReV portal appeared to have stalled at 87.48 per cent, representing 3,292 polling-unit results, leaving 471 results yet to be uploaded.
Writing on the development, he asked why the outstanding results had not appeared on the portal despite the late hour, saying it was already past 10 p.m.
INEC subsequently resumed the uploading of results. By about 2 a.m. on Sunday, Peterside acknowledged that results from 3,612 polling units, representing about 95.99 per cent, had been uploaded.
However, he remained concerned about the pace at which the final batch was being uploaded.
He asked INEC to explain ‘why it took you longer to collate the last 13% of the results than it took to collate the first 87%,’ and questioned whether the delay was caused by a technical ‘glitch.’
The development came as INEC continued the collation and eventual declaration of the Osun governorship election result in the early hours of Sunday.
The electoral commission later declared Adeleke, the Accord Party candidate and incumbent governor, winner of the election with 511,067 votes. His closest challenger, the All Progressives Congress (APC) candidate, Bola Oyebamiji, scored 444,815 votes.
Peterside has previously cited the 2022 Osun governorship election as an example of how electronic results transmission could enhance transparency in Nigeria’s electoral process.
He had noted that in the 2022 election, voters and observers could identify the likely winner relatively early through results uploaded to IReV. INEC’s own records from that election period show that all 3,763 Osun polling units were eventually uploaded to the portal.
His latest intervention therefore reflects a broader concern about public confidence in the electronic results-management system ahead of the 2027 general elections.
For Peterside, the issue is not simply how quickly a winner is declared, but whether the process leading to that declaration is sufficiently transparent and verifiable.
The Osun election, which was closely watched as an important test of INEC’s preparations ahead of the 2027 elections, ultimately ended with Adeleke securing a second term after winning 19 of the state’s 30 local government areas.
Peterside’s questions now put the spotlight on INEC to clarify what caused the apparent slowdown in the final phase of IReV uploads and whether any technical difficulty affected the electronic transmission of results.
For stakeholders monitoring Nigeria’s electoral reforms, the explanation could be significant in determining whether the IReV system is functioning as intended and whether lessons from the Osun exercise should inform preparations for the 2027 polls.