‘We Made Arrests, Recovered Election Materials’ — Lagos Police React To Attack On Voters

• Governorship and house of assembly elections held on Saturday in Lagos.

• While some voters cast their votes without incident, others were not as lucky.

• Some voters took to social media to allege that they were attacked by thugs at the polling units.

Eko Hot Blog reports that the Commissioner of Police in Lagos State, Idowu Owohunwa, has said the command arrested a number of electoral offenders and recovered sensitive election materials after voters and polling units were attacked by thugs in the state.

The governorship and state houses of assembly elections held across the country on Saturday, but reports of voter intimidation were rife in Lagos.

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Thugs wearing masks reportedly attacked polling units at ward D, Igando/Ikotun area of Lagos state as well as other areas.

Also, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) postponed the governorship and state assembly elections in 10 polling units in Victoria Garden City (VGC) estate in Lagos state over security concerns.

Speaking on Saturday with journalists following his monitoring activities for the elections in the state, the police commissioner said the force also recovered offensive weapons but he could not tell the number of arrests.

“We made a number of arrests. We also made some recoveries, in terms of INEC-sensitive materials, ballot boxes, and offensive weapons. The number of arrests is still being compiled from our field officers,” Owohunwa said.

“I will by Sunday morning know the exact number and make it public. No one was killed in Lagos state during the gubernatorial election.

“Our operational plans actually anticipated that there would be breaches. It was planned in a way that whenever it occurred, our attention was drawn to such breaches.

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“We have a second layer action plan which we activated in most of the isolated instances where the breaches were reported. We promptly responded and restored order.”

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