Atiku Bets on Salaam: Inside the Opposition's Osun Gambit Ahead of 2027

On August 10, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar arrived in Osogbo for the ADC's campaign grand finale — not to speak generally about opposition politics, but to stand behind one specific name.

That name is Dr Najeem Folasayo Salaam, known locally as "Iwaloye," the ADC's governorship candidate. Atiku publicly backed him, National Accord reported, and urged Osun voters to entrust the party with the state.

It was also, notably, the campaign's grand finale — the last big set-piece rally before Saturday's vote, not a routine campaign stop.

Presidential and vice-presidential figures do not typically headline a single state's governorship campaign in person. When they do, it tends to mean the party sees the race as a proxy battle for something larger than the state house.

Who Atiku is backing

Salaam is not a newcomer being introduced to Osun politics for the first time. He is a former Speaker of the Osun State House of Assembly and a former governor of the state, contesting this time with the backing of former Governor Rauf Aregbesola.

That combination is the spine of the opposition's pitch this cycle: a familiar face from Osun's own political history, running under a new banner, vouched for by two heavyweights — one national, one distinctly local.

Aregbesola's own history in Osun politics is itself part of why his backing carries weight here: Salaam is not being introduced to the state by an outsider, but by someone who has previously held the office himself.

Questioning the machines before questioning the count

Atiku's involvement in the Osun race was not limited to campaign rallies. Around August 12, he separately raised concerns about an alleged plan to deploy outdated BVAS devices in the election, publicly questioning INEC's technical readiness, Daily Post reported.

Outdated accreditation devices, if the allegation is accurate, would not by themselves change how anyone's vote is counted — but they go directly to how reliably each voter is verified before casting one, which is a foundational, not cosmetic, concern.

Coming from a former vice president and one of the opposition's most experienced national campaigners, the intervention added institutional weight to a concern about the technology underpinning the vote — not just its politics.

It is worth noting that Atiku raised the BVAS concern as a question about readiness, not as an allegation of a specific fault already found — a distinction between suspicion and proof that will likely matter more, not less, once results are in.

A three-way race, not a two-way one

On August 13, the ADC alleged, per Daily Post, that the contest was a "do-or-die" battle for the APC nationally — a claim that, true or not, reflects something real about how the opposition reads this race: not a simple two-horse contest, but a genuinely three-way one.

An incumbent governor running for re-election on a different party's ticket than the one that first elected him is not a routine occurrence in Nigerian politics. Adeleke's move to the Accord Party, alongside Oyebamiji's APC-establishment backing and Salaam's ADC bid, is what turns this into the three-cornered contest the ADC itself described.

Incumbent Ademola Adeleke is contesting not on the PDP platform that elected him in 2022, but on the Accord Party. The APC's Bola Oyebamiji, meanwhile, carries the backing of the party's national structure and former Governor Oyetola.

Three candidates, three distinct coalitions, none of them running on the party banner that defined Osun's last cycle. That alone makes 2026 a genuinely different electoral map from 2022, not a rerun of it.

Adeleke on the Accord Party, not the PDP that first elected him. Oyebamiji backed by the APC's national machine and former Governor Oyetola. Salaam carrying the ADC banner with Atiku and Aregbesola behind him. Three coalitions, three separate bets on Osun's next governor.

Reading Osun as a 2027 rehearsal

Zoom out, and the Osun race becomes a test of something bigger than one governorship. It is an early trial of opposition realignment ahead of Nigeria's 2027 general election — the ADC/Atiku bloc on one side, Adeleke's Accord gambit on another, and the ruling APC's national machine on a third.

That is the frame Atiku himself appeared to be applying in Osogbo. His travel, his remarks, and his separate intervention on BVAS devices all fit a pattern of a national politician treating a state election as a proving ground, not a courtesy appearance.

None of the three is running under the party banner that would have made this a simple repeat of Osun's recent past. That is precisely what makes Atiku's personal presence in Osogbo worth reading closely: he did not send a surrogate to a routine state contest. He came himself, for a candidate who is neither PDP nor APC, in a state that has already changed its governing party once this decade.

If the ADC's bet on Salaam pays off, Atiku gets to say his coalition can win outside its traditional strongholds — a claim with obvious value heading into 2027. If it does not, the "do-or-die" framing his party used becomes, instead, evidence of an opposition that talked bigger than it delivered.

A visible, personally brokered win in a state like Osun would hand Atiku something concrete to point to heading into the next national cycle: proof that his coalition-building can translate into actual votes, not just alliances announced on a stage in Osogbo.

What Saturday actually tests

None of this determines who governs Osun. That answer still depends on a vote count that, as of this weekend, remained in progress.

But it does mean that whatever number eventually comes out of Osun's collation centres will be read in Abuja as well as Osogbo — not just as a verdict on Adeleke, Oyebamiji or Salaam individually, but as an early data point on whether Atiku's opposition coalition-building has any real pull left before the country votes again in 2027.

For the ADC, that kind of scrutiny cuts both ways. It is attention the party arguably wants — and a spotlight it cannot fully control once the counting starts.

Whichever way Saturday's numbers eventually break, Osogbo's grand finale will be remembered as the moment Atiku chose to make his support for Salaam public, personal and impossible to walk back.

Atiku came to Osogbo to make a bet on a name few outside Osun recognise. Whether that bet was shrewd or premature is a question only Saturday's count, and the campaigns still to come, can answer.

Saturday's count has since answered that question, and not in the ADC's favour. INEC declared Adeleke winner on Sunday with 511,067 votes to Oyebamiji's 444,815 — while Salaam, the man Atiku flew into Osogbo to personally endorse, finished a distant third with just 17,180 votes, roughly 1.7 percent of the valid total, Pulse Nigeria reported. He reportedly lost even his own Ejigbo local government to Adeleke's Accord Party, per Tribune Online.

That is not a close loss an opposition coalition can spin into 2027 momentum. Atiku himself appeared to read it that way: rather than contest the count, he congratulated Adeleke on the win once it was declared. The gambit this piece describes was real. So, now, is its result.