What happened in the 2023 general election was that the non-indigenes were actually bullied. They were asked to leave the polling units because they are not indigenous. We were intimidated. All were intimidated, some were beaten, some were stabbed. One of the Labour Party agents was stabbed at a collation centre and when he was taken to the hospital, after a series of surgeries, a few months later, he died because of this incident. 2023 was something else entirely because the intimidation of the non-indigenes was just so much.
I experienced violence and intimidation because the ruling party wanted to, by all means, come into power. That’s why they believed the non-indigenes had more voice in Lagos state.
Thugs, the agberos on the streets, were involved in the intimidation. They don’t want you to even cast your vote. They just want you to stay in your house and not come out. They paid them mostly to come out and intimidate because they have nothing to lose. If they should stab you, they don’t have families. But you, being the voter, you have somewhere to lay your head. You have your own family. So, you are losing.
Some of them were actually saying, “Omo Igbo, una no go like go back to una land. Here no be una land, make una go back. Wetin una dey find for here?” It looked somehow. Because of the election, you remember that these people are Omo Igbos. But after the general election, you act like everybody is normal again. You still come back to gist with that Omo Igbo. You still want to come back and ask the Omo Igbo for money again.
We experienced many difficulties with voting. First of all, some election materials arrived at the polling unit by 11 or 12 pm, and voting commenced very late. No reason was given for the delay of the election materials. The only thing they will tell you is that it’s not their fault. It’s actually from the local government because they don’t have the logistics to convey the electoral materials from the local government down to the polling unit.
I would say that the 2023 general election was worse compared to 2019. 2019 was even a little bit better because I was only bullied. I was not intimidated. But in 2023, we saw where these people went to the extreme of stabbing people, going with cutlasses, different objects, trying to hit people, trying to create fear in people, so that people will go back and won’t go out to vote.
I foresaw the danger ahead of that general election in 2023. We are looking at how 2027 is going to be. It’s going to be worse than what we saw in 2023.
Personally, it affected me because at the time, it discouraged me. When you are trying to talk to people, you hear people tell you they’ve given up already. Some people told me that nothing will ever make them come out again to vote because this country is really messed up. I became discouraged at one time. But again, I felt this was the time again to rewrite history.
As narrated by: Evans Okafor (Lagos, Nigeria).
This snippet is published as part of the series, Not Your Lagos.
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