OSOGBO — The Osun State Police Command has summoned Senator Francis Fadahunsi, representing Osun East in the National Assembly, over a viral comment in which he was heard telling a crowd in Ilesa that Accord Party members sighted in the town before Saturday’s governorship election would be killed, even as Governor Ademola Adeleke escalated the matter to a national security threat and demanded the lawmaker’s arrest.
Findings by ValidViewNetwork revealed that the summons was confirmed on Wednesday by the command’s spokesperson, who told journalists that the Commissioner of Police in charge of the election had directed the senator to report over the matter, with a fuller statement promised in due course.
Fadahunsi, a retired Assistant Comptroller-General of the Nigeria Customs Service, is representing Osun East in the Senate and is one of the most prominent APC figures in the state ahead of Saturday’s poll.
How the comment came about
Checks by ValidViewNetwork show the remark was made on Tuesday at the palace of the Owa Obokun of Ijesaland in Ilesa, where Fadahunsi addressed a protest organised over the alleged killing of three APC members in the town earlier that day.
Speaking in Yoruba, the senator, referencing APC casualties, told the gathering that any Accord member spotted in Ilesa before election day would be killed.
The comment, captured on video, spread rapidly online after being shared by Afrobeats star Davido and lawyer Pelumi Olajengbesi, drawing national outrage within hours.
Fadahunsi was not alone. In a separate video obtained the same day, Francis Eniade, the APC candidate for Ifelodun/Boripe/Odo-Otin Federal Constituency in the 2027 elections, was seen addressing a campaign rally warning that no Accord Party member should come out to vote in Odo-Otin Local Government on election day, and instructing APC supporters to pass the same message down to their wards and units.
Adeleke: “Beyond politics”
ValidViewNetwork gathered that Governor Adeleke, addressing journalists in Osogbo, described Fadahunsi’s comment as a call for the killing of Accord Party leaders, supporters and, where those leaders could not be reached, their wives and children.
The governor said he had personally briefed the Inspector-General of Police, Olatunji Disu, on the video and demanded Fadahunsi’s investigation and arrest, adding that the IGP confirmed having seen the footage and pledged immediate action.
Adeleke characterised the episode as a matter for the Office of the National Security Adviser rather than ordinary campaign rhetoric.
Fadahunsi’s defence: “Deliberately manipulated”
Confronted with the backlash, Fadahunsi issued a personal statement rejecting the interpretation placed on his words, insisting the clip circulated by Davido and Olajengbesi had been edited from a speech that ran roughly 24 minutes, with only a fraction extracted and repackaged for what he called cheap political ends.
According to the statement, his original remarks referenced one Rogba, a young man reportedly killed by co-cultists in Esa-Oke and described by the governor as his own son, alongside a separate live-television disagreement between Adeleke and a sitting member of the House of Representatives.
Fadahunsi maintained that his actual message was a warning that APC would not fold its arms if its members kept being killed, and that the party would defend its own, including on election day itself, should the killings continue.
He stressed that both APC and Accord casualties were sons and daughters of the same communities. This account differs from his media office’s earlier explanation the previous day, which had described the comment as a purely metaphorical call to “kill” Accord at the ballot box through votes, not violence — a version that made no mention of an edited video or the Rogba killing.
A town already burying its dead
The controversy sits against a backdrop of documented bloodshed in Ilesa in the days before the vote, with APC supporters staging street protests over the killing of party members in the town, and rival camps trading blame over a rising toll of politically linked deaths.
That volatile atmosphere, security analysts say, is precisely why language from senior political figures — whether intended literally or not, carries outsized weight so close to a contested poll.
What happens next
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As of this report, the police command has not disclosed a date for Fadahunsi’s appearance before the Commissioner of Police, nor confirmed any charge.
Eniade’s comments on barring Accord voters from Odo-Otin have not attracted a separate police statement. Security agencies, including the Inspector-General’s office, are now under pressure to demonstrate that Saturday’s governorship election can proceed without further bloodshed, regardless of which political camp is found responsible for the rhetoric or the killings preceding it.
