Youth Party, Labour Party Condemn Lagos Council Polls as “Shambolic” and “Rigged”

The Youth Party and the Labour Party have strongly condemned the conduct of the Lagos State Local Government elections held on Saturday, July 12, 2025, describing the process as fundamentally flawed and manipulated in favour of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC).

The Lagos State Independent Electoral Commission (LASIEC) had on Sunday declared the APC victorious in all 57 chairmanship contests and 375 out of 376 councillorship seats across the state. The only exception was a councillorship seat in Ward D, Yaba LCDA, won by the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP).

In a scathing statement issued by the Chairman of the Youth Party’s Lagos chapter, Francisco Doregos, the party described the election as “shambolic” and “blatantly rigged with reckless abandon.”

“Expectedly, the Lagos State Local Government Elections were anything but credible,” Doregos said. “Our candidates were deliberately sidelined through systematic voter suppression, security intimidation, and collusion between LASIEC officials and APC operatives.”

He alleged that LASIEC was compromised from the outset, pointing to the appointment of commissioners with known political affiliations to the APC. He further accused the commission of failing to meet basic electoral obligations, including timely publication of voter registers and proper issuance of election notices.

Despite the alleged irregularities, Doregos claimed that the Youth Party outperformed other opposition parties in several polling units where it fielded candidates. “We emerged as the preferred choice wherever the process was not manipulated,” he added.

Echoing similar concerns, the Labour Party also issued a strongly worded statement rejecting the outcome of the poll. In a release signed by the Chairman of its National Caretaker Committee, Senator Nenadi Usman, and circulated by her media aide, Ken Asogwa, the party described the exercise as a “dangerous blueprint for electoral fraud” ahead of the 2027 general elections.

According to Usman, the APC’s total sweep of the election “was not only shameless but unprecedented in Nigeria’s electoral history.”

“The farce that played out in Lagos on Saturday has exposed the APC as a party fundamentally allergic to democratic principles and due process,” the statement read. “The collusion between LASIEC officials and APC agents was done in the open, with little regard for legal or electoral standards.”

Labour Party agents reportedly observed numerous irregularities, including ballot boxes pre-filled with thumb-printed votes and result sheets allegedly completed before voting even began.

“Even the bare minimum of pretending to respect the people’s mandate has been discarded by the APC,” the party lamented.

Both parties have called for calm among their supporters but demanded immediate action. The Labour Party, in particular, is urging LASIEC to cancel the announced results and conduct a fresh, transparent election.

“Lagos, the so-called Centre of Excellence, must not become the epicenter of electoral malpractice,” Asogwa concluded. “What transpired is a red flag, and all lovers of democracy should be deeply concerned.”