Social influencer, Pamilerin Adegoke shared a video on Twitter claiming area boys are reportedly tearing ballot papers and collecting peoples phone in Ikate Elegushi in Lagos State.
He asked where the security officials in the State were, and also asked the Independent Electoral Commission (INEC) if this is free and fair.
In Lagos, Nigeria’s commercial capital, there are usually pockets of violence on election day. However, the frequency appears to have hit fever pitch in recent years.
Some analysts said the attacks began to intensify after the 2015 election, where the major opposition party in the state, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), won 14 seats – eight in the state parliament and six in the federal parliament.
Two years later, during the local government elections in Lagos, cases of voter intimidation and harassment were reported in several polling units, mostly in the PDP strongholds.
In 2017, Chinedu Ezugha, a PDP vice chairmanship candidate in Ajeromi-Ifelodun, said he could not vote on election day because of threats to his life.
By the 2019 governorship election, the voter turnout in the state had shrunk: there were at least half a million less voters compared to 2015.
According to The Punch newspaper, Lagos State recorded the lowest voter turnout in the country during the governorship and state legislature elections: just over one million people cast their votes out of 5.5 million eligible voters (18%).
The PDP did not win any seat in the state parliament. They, however, won two in the federal parliament. Hakeem Amode, the PDP spokesperson in Lagos, attributed their dismal performance in 2019 to the threats of violence.
“The governing party in Lagos is known to be using intimidation, thugs, the touts in Lagos to intimidate voters,” Amode tells The Africa Report.
“And that is why we usually have low turnout because people are scared of their lives. There will be a change of system in Lagos if there is [a] free and fair election.”
Since the return of democracy in 1999, Bola Tinubu has had a stranglehold on the State.
He avoided public office after the expiration of his governorship term in 2007, but remained instrumental in determining who governs Lagos or sits in the state and federal parliaments.
However, for the first time in 20 years, Tinubu will be on the ballot again. Amode says the implication is that the voter intimidation and vote-buying that was witnessed on election days “is going to escalate to the form that we have never seen”.
In October, suspected thugs from the ruling party attacked PDP members who had gone to campaign in the Badagry area of the state. Amode said one of those injured, a journalist, “nearly lost his life”.
History is repeating itself in 2023 general elections as videos of thugs reportedly working for the All Progressives Congress presidential candidate, Bola Tinubu, assaulting voters have emerged on social media platforms.
In a video trending online, thugs assaulted a woman at 30 Ishadare Street, off Fafolu Onipanu, Lagos, for voting Labour Party presidential candidate, Peter Obi.
Voters are reportedly being followed to their polling unit to ensure they vote APC presidential candidate.
In another video, an APC agent was caught on camera threatening voters who won’t vote the party to go home at Fehintola Giwa Street, Aguda, Surulere area of the State.