Thugs Disrupt Voting In Lagos, Destroy Election Materials 

About 28,479 voters were disenfranchised in some parts of Lagos State when political thugs in the early hours of Saturday attacked some polling units and chased away people who came to perform their Civic responsibility.
The incidents which started at about 12.30pm in some parts of the city affected Olofin Primary School polling unit, Akesan Community in Alimosho Local Government Area,  Eti-Osa Local Government, Surulere, Oshodi, Okota, Lekki, and  Ebutemeta .
According to an eyewitness account in Olofin Primary School polling unit, Akesan, “Hundreds of electorates scampered to safety and could not perform their civic duties as a result of the violence.
Lekan Timothy who spoke to our correspondent, said, the thugs, alleged to be indigenes of the community, came in large numbers and started harassing people on the queue.
He said, “They (the thugs) came and were asking why people were taking pictures and making videos, just looking for different means to cause trouble.
“Even when they were helping their own people jump the queue so that they can vote ahead of us, we kept our cool, but they still found a way to disrupt the process while majority of us had not cast our votes. 80 per cnt of us did not vote at the polling unit.
“They started by beating up one of the male electorates, throwing stones and sending everybody out of the premises.
“They destroyed the ballot box and ballot papers of the votes already cast inside it, including the canopies housing the INEC officials and party agents.
“They even broke a guy’s head. The Police officers present hurriedly left the premises in their motorcycles”.
Another source told our correspondent that the thugs had been subtly intimidating some electorates since the process began in a bid to influence their choice or scare them off.
He explained that it had been their plan all along to disrupt the election, and only waited for the right time to perpetrate their nefarious act.
When our correspondent went to the polling unit, there was heavy presence of soldiers at the entrance safeguarding the electoral officials.
Also, there was violence in Oshodi polling units, where some voters were injured when some alleged suspected political thugs forced people to vote a particular Presidential candidate, snatched ballot box, disenfranchising over 5,000 non-yorubas speaking tribe.
While in Eti-Osa Local Government Area, a popular Nollywood actress, Chioma Chukwuka, was denied of her voting right, when some suspected thugs invaded her polling unit and disrupted election process, and carted away election materials.