The Youth Party has strongly condemned the conduct of the Lagos State Local Government elections held on Saturday, July 12, 2025, describing the process as “shambolic” and “blatantly rigged” in favour of the ruling All Progressives Congress, APC.
This condemnation follows a similar rejection by the Labour Party, which labelled the exercise a “dangerous blueprint for electoral fraud” ahead of the 2027 general elections.
On Sunday, the Lagos State Independent Electoral Commission, LASIEC, declared APC candidates as winners of all 57 chairmanship positions contested.
The party also secured 375 out of the 376 councillorship seats, with the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, clinching a single ward.
In a statement issued by the Chairman of the Youth Party’s Lagos chapter, Francisco Doregos, the party accused LASIEC of presiding over a deeply flawed process, citing incidents of voter suppression and widespread malpractice.
“Expectedly, the Lagos State Local Government Elections were shambolic and blatantly rigged against our candidates with reckless and shameless abandon,” Doregos said.
He alleged that the electoral body had been compromised from the onset, pointing to the appointment of commissioners with known affiliations to the APC.
Doregos also accused LASIEC of failing to meet essential legal requirements, such as issuing proper election notices and publishing the voters’ register ahead of the polls.
The Youth Party also claimed that security agencies were used to intimidate and obstruct its candidates, yet it insisted that it outperformed other opposition parties in the areas where it fielded candidates.
“We were obviously the preferred party without rigging,” Doregos asserted.
“We emerged as the most preferred choice across the polling units where we fielded candidates, outperforming the PDP, AA, ZLP and other opposition parties,” he added.
The Labour Party also expressed strong dissatisfaction with the outcome of the election. In a statement signed by the Chairman of its National Caretaker Committee, Senator Nenadi Usman, and issued in Abuja by her Senior Special Adviser on Media, Ken Asogwa, the party accused the APC of brazen electoral manipulation, with alleged collusion from LASIEC officials.
According to Usman, the APC’s clean sweep of the election was “shameless” and “unprecedented in Nigeria’s electoral history.”
“The farce that played out in Lagos on Saturday under the guise of council election has once again exposed the APC as a party allergic to democratic principles and due process,” the statement read.
“The audacity with which LASIEC officials collaborated openly with APC operatives represents a new low.”
The Labour Party claimed that its agents across various parts of the state reported numerous irregularities, including ballot boxes already stuffed with thumb-printed papers and pre-filled result sheets brought to polling units even before voting began.
“While no one expects electoral decency from the APC, we had hoped they would at least pretend. Even that pretence has now been discarded,” the party lamented.
Calling for calm among its supporters, the Labour Party demanded an immediate cancellation of the results and the conduct of a fresh, credible election process that truly reflects the will of Lagosians.
“Lagos, known as the Centre of Excellence, should not be reduced to a theatre of electoral absurdity. What happened on Saturday is a clear red flag, one that all true democrats in Nigeria should be alarmed by,” Asogwa warned.
