Athena Observatory Hails Voter Turnout, INEC Improvement In Osun Poll
The Athena Election Observatory (AEO) has credited the success of the Saturday governorship election in Osun State to high voter turnout and improvement in technology deployment by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC).
AEO, the Election Analytics department of the Athena Centre said this in a report on Osun Governorship Election 2026 made available to journalists on Tuesday.
The report which was signed by Chief Osita Chidoka, the Executive Director of the Athena Centre.
It said the election suffered minimal manipulation because of the presence of agents across polling units, good knowledge of the electoral process, effective party organisation and capacity to independently track results from polling units to collation level.
The report said a hugely and competitively mobilised electorate would be expensive and difficult for anyone who sought to influence an election through large-scale retail vote buying.
“The electorate also grew substantially, registered voters rose from 1,952,387 in 2022 to 2,339,544 in 2026, an increase of 19.8 percent with accredited voters rising from 827,218 to 1,010,684, while votes cast rose from 823,124 to 1,005,800.
“Accredited voters in relation to registered voters also moved modestly from 42.37 percent to 43.20 percent, so, while the absolute number of participating voters expanded significantly, the accreditation rate remained largely stable.
“With the winner’s vote rising from 403,371 in 2022 to 511,067 in 2026 and the runner up votes increasing from 375,027 to 444,815, it is clear that both mobilised substantially more than four years ago.
“The declared margin also widened from 28,344 to 66,252 votes, producing a competitive contest with a clear declared margin, the competition and organisation made manipulation harder.
“INEC’s election technology also indicated important improvements, BVAS accreditation, IReV upload of polling-unit results, and structured result entry into BVAS increasingly created an auditable trail from the polling unit,” it said.
Athena Election Observatory however identified some challenges including upload delays, transparency in transmission timelines, system resilience, and reconciliation across different digital records.
It said it would continue to interrogate the Osun State election through a rigorous post-election audit of polling-unit data as recorded in BVAS and Forms EC8B–E as well as reconciling them with higher level collation stages and INEC’s final declaration.
“Osun’s governorship election reinforces AEO’s position that organised political competition is an important safeguard for electoral integrity,” it said.
