What should have been a smooth start to Saturday’s local council election in Lagos was marred by frustrating delays across at least 15 polling units in the Abule Egba and Meiran areas, with voters left waiting for hours due to logistical failures.
Voter accreditation was scheduled to kick off by 8:00 a.m., as announced by the Lagos State Independent Electoral Commission (LASIEC), but many polling stations remained unmanned well into mid-morning.
From Old Ota Road through the inner streets of Meiran, several units remained empty, their booths deserted, and officials were nowhere in sight, according to Punch.
At Kabowe Bus Stop’s Polling Unit 047 in Meiran, not a single vote had been cast by 9:30 a.m. The area was quiet, bearing none of the energy typical of election mornings.
Polling Units 029, 107, and 028, all in the Olota axis, were also without officials by 10:00 a.m. Further down Ekoro Road, PUs 011, 034, 061, 017, 010, 027, 022, 045, and 008 recorded similar late starts, with voting activities not commencing until well after 10:30 a.m.
The reason for the setbacks according to LASIEC
A cascade of logistic mix-ups, ranging from wrongly labelled materials to mismatched polling codes, fuel shortages, and overcrowded staff vehicles, was blamed for the setbacks.
“We were at the local government office to sort out the election equipment, but the directions given to us weren’t clear. So, we had to call the office again to get a clearer description of our polling unit. That’s why we got here late,” the Presiding Officer at Polling Unit 039, Meiran Bus Stop, Grace Tolape said via Punch.
Tolape also lamented the poor turnout: “As of a little past 12 p.m., fewer than 30 people have voted out of over 1,000 registered voters. Most of the people have failed to come out; only a few have been turning up.”
A Polling Clerk at PU 017 on Ekoro Road, Owolabi Isaac, explained how a mismatch between envelope labels and the materials inside caused confusion.
“The number written outside our envelope is Unit 16, but inside the envelope, we have Unit 17. That discrepancy caused the problem,” he said. “We walked a lot of miles before we got here… I have exhausted my strength already.”
At PU 07, another presiding officer, who requested anonymity, shared a more distressing account. Her team’s vehicle ran out of fuel after multiple wrong turns.
“We missed our way several times. We drove through Ikola into Kola, yet we couldn’t find the location. Amid the confusion, someone saw the address and told us it was after the health centre in Meiran.
“But before we could get there, as you can see, our vehicle ran out of fuel. So, we had to call the office, and they said they would send someone to pick us up, which was the private car you saw,” she recounted, according to the Punch.
A LASIEC official stationed at PU 034 echoed the frustration, noting discrepancies between codes provided by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) and LASIEC.
“The problem was that INEC changed most of the codes, so the INEC codes were actually different from the ones LASIEC gave us. That was why it was very difficult for us to locate the polling units,” the official explained.
She also described how transportation inefficiencies contributed: “Normally, it’s supposed to be two polling units per vehicle, but due to some reasons, many of us had to pack ourselves into a single bus. The bus had to start dropping people at their locations before we got to ours.”
The combined effect of poor coordination, logistical oversights, and infrastructural hiccups left voters disillusioned, further fueling concerns about public confidence in local electoral processes.