Osun Motor Park Crisis Deepens as Police Allegations Fly

Gunshots, tear gas and political brinkmanship in Osun motor parks

Osun’s motor park battle has spilled into a wider security and political storm, with fresh allegations that armed police escorted thugs into Ile-Ife’s Mayfair Motor Park despite Governor Ademola Adeleke’s suspension order. The state denies any vacuum in transport leadership, but the optics are toxic.

Atlantic Post

July 28, 2026

3–4 minutes

Ademola Adeleke, Ile-Ife, motor parks, NURTW, Osun State, police allegations

OSOGBO, Osun State — The latest turmoil around Osun’s transport parks has pushed the state into a dangerous zone where law enforcement, transport unions and political power are now colliding in public view.

According to the report under review, Mayfair Motor Park in Ile-Ife was thrown into panic after gunshots were heard and tear gas was allegedly deployed as armed police personnel escorted a group described as thugs into the park.

That allegation sits against an already volatile background in which earlier reports accused police of allegedly providing cover for Asiri Eniba’s camp during a similar motor park struggle.

What makes the episode especially combustible is that Governor Ademola Adeleke had already moved to shut down union operations inside motor parks across the state.

The order, issued after a Security Council meeting, directed the police and other security agencies to stop all activities of the National Union of Road Transport Workers in the parks, suspend levy collection and arrest anyone parading as an official of the union.

The governor was explicit that the parks were not being closed; rather, the union’s grip on them was to be removed. His message was blunt: “stop all activities of the union”, while the parks themselves “are not closed”.

The state government later moved quickly to contain the political and legal confusion that followed the order. In a clarification published on the Osun State Government’s official website, officials said Nurudeen Alowonle remained the substantive NURTW chairman in Osun and stressed that there was “no vacuum in the leadership of the union”.

The government insisted it had not dissolved the union’s executives at any level; instead, it said it had suspended union activities in the parks pending the restoration of peace. That distinction is important, because it suggests the state’s target is not the existence of the union, but the power structure around the parks and the violence linked to it.

The wider context is a state already under repeated pressure from factional clashes around motor parks. Recent reports from Osogbo described gunshots around Old Garage and other parks, with traders and passers-by scampering for safety while security personnel intervened with warning shots and tear gas.

In one account, the police said they deployed operatives immediately after a distress call; in another, the state government accused armed groups of using the parks as theatres of intimidation.

Separate reports also said suspected political thugs had attacked motor parks in other parts of Osun earlier in the year, injuring residents and deepening fears that the transport system has become a proxy battlefield.

This is where the story stops being a local transport row and starts looking like a governance test. If the allegations of police escort and protection are accurate, then the credibility of the security architecture around Osun’s parks is badly compromised.

If, on the other hand, the police were acting to restore order, the command has an urgent duty to explain why the visuals and eyewitness accounts have produced the opposite impression.

Either way, the optics are severe: a state government says it is trying to de-escalate violence, while residents are being told—through gunfire, tear gas and competing narratives—that the struggle for control is still very much on.

The timing could hardly be worse. INEC is already deep into the machinery of the 2026 Osun governorship election, with official portals open for polling-agent uploads and media accreditation processes already underway.

That means every motor park clash now carries a wider political meaning, because transport corridors are not just economic spaces in Osun; they are mobilisation hubs, influence channels and potential pressure points in an election season.

Any perception that security actors are unevenly applied will immediately feed suspicion about the fairness of the coming poll.

Until the Osun Police Command speaks clearly and the state provides a fuller accounting of what happened at Mayfair Motor Park, the affair will continue to hang over the Adeleke administration like a warning flare. In a state where transport parks have become symbols of political control, every gunshot, every arrest and every alleged escort now reads like part of a larger contest for who really commands the streets.