Op-Ed: Sustainability Of OSPOLY's E-Voting, Concerns And Applauses
The just-concluded Student Union Executives' (SUE) election, which saw the use of the Novel Electronic voting process (E-Voting), held on September 5, 2025, in Osun State Polytechnic, Iree, marks a phenomenal milestone in the institution's history.
In past years, Student Union Executive elections were characterized by long queues, costly paper ballots, and deafening controversies of electoral malpractices, thereby raising doubts about the transparency of these manual elections.
Peculiarly, OSPOLY's 2025 Electronic election highlights both new challenges and possibilities to make Student Union elections in the institution more transparent, free, fair, and most importantly, violent-free.
The OSPOLY SUE 2025/2026 election which lasted for about Eight hours gave students a voting window through their portal, after which the results of the election were announced.
Earlier, the E-voting system was tested, sparking widespread mixed reactions among students about the innovation. Among the concerns of students were network stability, literacy level of the student populace on how to vote via electronic means and transparency of the E-voting system.
Despite the unprecedented success of the E-voting election in OSPOLY, eliminating chances for violence— a menace which had previously, on many occasions, disrupted elections in the institution.The E-voting also minimized cost.
While some electorates lamented disenfranchisement. Some of these cases of disenfranchisement were related to suspected hijack of Students' portals to cast vote, while others was caused by poor network. Hopefully, these challenges would be tackled in subsequent elections.
Speaking after the Novel E-voting election, OSPOLY's Independent Student Electoral Commission (ISEC) Chairman, Soyinka Abraham, stated that some students who were not allowed to vote had “violated the rules of the e-voting process.”
Sadly, some students insisted that they didn't violate any rule of the E-voting exercise, yet, they couldn't vote for their choice candidate.
Despite students' complaints, concerns and praised raked by the E-voting election, it produced winners for the 2025/2026 academic session:
Executive positions: President-elect: Ajayi secured 914 votes, defeating his rivals Oladeji Israel (Issy) with 412 votes and Ilori Stephen (Analog) with 219 votes.
Vice President: Abdulsalam Oyatoye won with 875 votes, beating Emmanuel Olarunnisola who had 445 votes.
General Secretary: Anuoluwapo Odudu polled 856 votes, ahead of Abdulquadri Adeleke with 372 votes.
Treasurer: Fridaos Bello, unopposed, received 1,074 votes.
Welfare Director: Wariths Adeniyi, unopposed, got 967 votes.
Public Relations Officer: Lateef Akinloye, unopposed, secured 979 votes.
Sports Director: Moses Adeboye emerged winner with 940 votes, defeating Olayemi Sekoni (57 votes) and Olawale Adesoji (51 votes).
Assistant General Secretary: Mariam Jimoh won with 628 votes, beating Abdullahi Olagunju who had 388 votes.
Social Director: Tomiwa Aderounmu, unopposed, received 976 votes. Financial Secretary: Oni Joshua, unopposed, secured 1,018 votes. Auditor: Idris Kolapo, unopposed, had 953 votes.
The results show that many positions were strongly contested, while a few of them were unopposed, establishing that students of OSPOLY are keen about leadership.
Overall, OSPOLY'S 2025/2026 E-voting election reaffirmed technology as an instrument of innovation, growth and progress. I hope that the next SUG election in OSPOLY would be an E-voting and it would be more flawless and transparent.
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