THERE was low turnout of voters on Sunday, March 19 at the 10 polling units in Victoria Garden City (VGC) Lekki, Eti-Osa local government area, Lagos state, where governorship and Assembly elections held.
The elections had been shifted from Saturday March 18 till Sunday after staff of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) set up voting materials outside the VGC estate gate but the estate residents refused to vote there, arguing hoodlums might disrupt the process.
Polling units (PU) affected included PU 032, 033, and 119-124.
A check by The ICIR on INEC’s portal on these affected polling units showed that from a total of 2,356 registered voters at PU 032, only 374 voters were accredited. There, the Labour Party (LP) got 287 votes, while the All Progressives Congress (APC) scored 66 votes.
Of the 2,097 registered voters at PU 033, only 325 voters were accredited as LP polled 212 votes, and APC, 88. In PU 119, of the 92 registered voters, 33 voters were accredited as LP polled 27 votes, and APC, four.
Uploaded results at the INEC’s portal also showed that of the 750 registered voters in PU 120, only 105 were accredited, with the LP polling 79 votes, and APC, 21 votes, while from 151 registered voters in PU 121, APC got 13 votes and LP, 45 of the total number of 64 accredited voters.
At the PU 122, APC scored seven votes, and LP, 51 of the 58 accredited voters from a total of 184 registered voters. Also at PU 123, APC got two votes, and LP, 51 of the total number of 59 accredited voters from 180 registered voters, while from the 214 registered voters at PU 124, only 84 voters were accredited that gave APC eight votes and LP, 73.
This indicated that of a total number of 6,024 registered voters in the eight polling units, only 1,102 people came out to cast their votes, representing about 18 per cent of total registered voters in the polling units.
The ICIR recalls that the INEC Resident Electoral Commissioner, Segun Agbaje, had told journalists, “We have eight polling units here with 6,024 registered voters, out of which 5,624 people have their PVCs.”