22nd October, 2011
Lagos State Governor, Mr Babatunde Fashola (SAN) on Saturday cast his vote in the Local Government elections at the Ward G3 Iponri located in the State Junior Grammar School (Special) Surulere, stating that the government will punish all those who commit electoral offences in the election.
Governor Fashola who spoke in an interview with journalists after casting his vote alongside his wife, Dame Emmanuella Abimbola Fashola, said: “we are determined to do that to send a message that this process is important for our(the people’s) livelihood and we will not look lightly on those who try to subvert or interfere with it.
“The reports I have is not conclusive yet and therefore we will continue to monitor and to see. We plan for the worst and hoping for the best to ensure that we have hitch free and violence free elections.â€
He stressed that the Local Government election is the election that really has the propensity to produce the candidates that have the representative authority for the people in a most direct sense.
“We have had general elections which took place earlier in the year and now, we are dealing with Local Government election and they are local to each community because this are representatives of the people at the lowest level of interaction and governance,†he explained.
The Governor who voted around 11.32am said from what he observed on his way to the polling unit, the state is peaceful with the process going on and appealed to citizens and residents to turn out because the process continues till much later in the day.
The Governor added that the residents and citizens would be doing themselves a world of good by participating in the election.
While speaking on the attention which the Local Government election has generated in Lagos State, the Governor said this is understandable because Lagos is a global city.
“You will expect that in the same way that you will have attention in other global cities when elections are being conducted. This kind of attention has become expected. We are all over the world so to speak and what happens here has a defining and definitive proportion for what happens in the country.
“This is the heart beat of the country itself and all major ethnic groups and ethnic nationalities are represented here. So, it is like a small election of Nigeria in a senseâ€, the Governor explained.