•Ajomale
Former Lagos State chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Chief Henry Ajomale, has expressed concern over the low voter turnout in the Saturday, July 12, Lagos State local government election.
In a chat with our correspondent, the member of the Governance Advisory Council (GAC) of Lagos State APC, however lauded the Lagos State Independent Electoral Commission (LASIEC) for the peaceful conduct of the election, reports Sunday Independent.
He said, “The election was peaceful, although there was a little delay. The low turnout is not unusual.”
On voter apathy, he said, “It’s not unusual, not something new. For local government election, people don’t come out the way it should be. I don’t know why it’s so.
“In federal and state elections people come out, maybe if we have 26 percent on federal, the state will have about 21 percent and local government will be lower. I don’t know the reason. Maybe they don’t have confidence in the process.”
Speaking further, he said, “Now that the local government gets more money, they’re doing better than before. They’re getting more money, they’re working more now and giving more dividend of democracy. Maybe the publicity is not enough. People are taking for granted that all politics are local and they assume that whatever they do, doesn’t have any impact.
“I haven’t done my research to find out exactly why it’s so. In federal election, you’ll discover that the queue must have gone longer but in local government election it’s different and that’s not encouraging at all. Let’s hope that in future there’ll be improvements.”
On his part, the lawmaker representing Oshodi/Isolo constituency 2 at the Lagos State House of Assembly, Hon. Ladi told our correspondent that LASIEC did very good publicity ahead of the election but regretted that people just decided to stay away from participating in the election.
Ladi who is also the chairman house committee on LASIEC, said, “This is one of our baby projects. Obviously, we tried all we could to ensure smooth exercise. For the voter apathy, the low turnout, I don’t think it’s just voter apathy, I think that people should just be involved. In my area I just cast my vote. People just have to get more involved in local government election. This is just grassroots politics, the first point of any government is the local government but here people don’t seem to care. They’re only interested in state and federal government elections. It’s more on the people and this time I can guarantee you that I’ve been ensuring that we monitor the work of LASIEC. Our publicity this time was topnotch. Almost on all BRT buses you have the posters of LASIEC. There were jingles on radio, jingles on television stations were all there. We made sure there was security. So they did everything they could but people just chose not to be interested in local government election. It’s really sad.”
On the way forward. He said. “People just need to be interested in local government election. They should come out, vote and defend their rights. LASIEC did everything humanly possible to put up publicity for this election. It has been in the news, back to back interviews, and back to back jingles. They had to put enough information out there for people to know. The fact that there’s no movement in the state, people are aware elections are going on but choose to sit down in their houses.
“Are we going to force people out of their houses to come and vote? It’s their constitutional right and now with what the president is doing at the local government, people should be more interested. It’s because they’re not interested in the local government that they have no idea the kind of funding that is going on in the local government. You have no idea the kind of accountability these people need to be given. There’s a right person there doing the job, you have not come to show interest. We can only encourage people to do better. We’re not very happy with the turnout.” Ladi added.
