Misleading Videos Fuel Claims of Igbo Disenfranchisement

Inec office, Igbede, Ojo LGA, Lagos State

Viral videos suggesting Independent National Electoral Commission (Inec) is discriminating against people from the Igbo ethnic group and refusing to allow them to register for Permanent Voters Cards (PVC) are misleading.

The videos, which were shot within and outside the Inec office in Igbede, in Ojo Local government Area in Lagos State, show some people fighting and others complaining that they were refused a chance to register to get their PVC because they are Igbo.

In one video, bystanders can be heard asking in Igbo language if the people who were then fighting inside the compound of the Inec office “can fight”.

However, eyewitnesses said the conflict had to do with a fight between members of the community where that registration was taking place and had nothing to do with Inec staff refusing to register people because of their ethnicity.

"A fight that started it all"

One of the eyewitnesses, Chinaza Ikemeziem, said the cause of the conflict was the insistence by the people who came to register that Inec staff must not take any of their capturing machines away from the premises.

Chinaza Ikemeziem

“What happened was that there was an influx of people. Alaba Market was closed so people can come for their PVC. There were thousands of people and the Inec staff couldn’t handle them. What caused trouble was when the Inec staff came to move their materials to other places where they do registration. The people who came to do registration refused to allow them to go and fight broke out,” Miss Ikemesiem said.

Miss Ikemesiem insisted that before the conflict over the movement of machines, there was no issue of discrimination on account of ethnicity.

“The issue was that only one machine was functional in the office and the people there didn’t want the other machines to be taken away from there,” She said.

Lawal Waheed, who also witnessed the conflict, said he was attacked after he got the Inec staff to safety.

“There are some machined that the Inec officials usually take out to other communities so that those people who cannot come here will be captured. This has been ongoing for some months. Some of the people who came to register were insisting that they must be captured before the machines are taken to another location. 

"Attempts to explain to them that the machines that will capture them were in the office and these were meant for another location fell on deaf ears. They attacked a male Inec staff and prevented him from leaving, but his female colleague managed to get into an okada and leave. They beat me and tore my clothes after I guided the Inec staff to safety,” he said.

Lawal Waheed

He added that a local chief was assaulted during the fracas, and this was what angered the youths in the community who arrived to confront the angry citizens.

Mr Waheed said that there was no time Inec staff tried to prevent anyone from being registered.

"There was nothing like 'Igbo people should not vote'"

“It was while the fracas was going on that we heard some people saying that they were taking the machines away because they don’t want Igbo people to vote. There was nothing like that at all,” Mr Waheed said.

A video shared on Twitter shows the Inec official returning to the office. Comments by bystanders also support his account as people could be heard saying “how can Alaba be here and they will be allowed to take the machine away” in Igbo.

The conflict occurred close to the Alaba International Market in Lagos.

The President of the Electronic Section of the market Paulinus Ugochuwu had shut down the market for one day to enable traders to register to vote in next year’s general elections.

Mr Ugochukwu confirmed that there were “issues” during the registration process but stressed that there was no case of attempted voter suppression or refusal to avail people of the registration process because of their ethnicity.

Inec to get more machines to Igbede

“We are aware of the issue that occurred in Igbede. When we heard of the issue, we called our people and asked them to remain calm and they did. Everywhere is calm now and people are still being registered,” he said.

He added that they are liaising with Inec to get more machines to ensure that those who want to be registered will be registered.

Mr Ugochukwu said he was inspired to call for the registration of voters in the market after he discovered that only about 500 people among 5000 had permanent or temporary voters cards.

“Our people don’t have voters cards because they don’t vote. But, since we started this process, people are very eager and many say they don’t mind if the market is shut down for one week for them to get their voters card,” He said.

Inec officials at the office in Igbede refused to speak about the issue because they are not authorised to do so. 

An influx of intending voters

However, the Inec Spokesperson in Lagos state, Nike Oriowo said the commission is continuing to register people across the state and added that they are seeing an influx of people in registration centres, especially at their centre in Tafawa Balewa Square, Lagos.

The Lagos State Police Spokesperson Mr Benjamin Hundeyin reacted to the trending videos on Twitter, saying the framing of what occurred was misleading. 

The Igbo are one of 3 major ethnic groups in Nigeria and are the most numerous traders in Alaba International market which is also in Ojo Local Government.

The Registration of voters was supposed to have ended ON May 31 2022, however, Inec extended it to June 30 2022.

Achebe and the Igbo narrative: not a single story

“Shege Inyamirin, arne kawai!” the man screamed at me as I sprawled on the red earth, my 20 litre water container, which a few moments ago was balanced on my head as I hurried across the railway track, was not too far away. I looked from the container,  which jerked as it expelled the water I had just fetched from Isa Kaita’s Dutse Close home, to the snarling man that had just pushed me, wondering why my being Igbo merited that much callousness. I looked towards my father’s chemist shop a few metres away, more worried about what he would do if the container was broken than going back to the long queue of people waiting their turn at the tap Alhaji Isa Kaita (CBE) had graciously provided for the public inside His expansive compound. Yes, the man had pushed me, and beyond his expletives that can only be summarised as "Igbo infidel", he offered no explanation and people around did not ask. Surely, why he pushed me, hampered as I was by my large container, was a question that should have been asked, especially as I had not impeded him, or brushed against him. My crime was having tribal marking beside my eyes that identified me to be Igbo, an ethnic group that everyone not Igbo seemed to hate—at least that was what my young mind felt then.

The event above happened about two decades ago in Angwa Shanu, a town in Kaduna North LGA, Kaduna state. It was one of several instances where my siblings and me were singled out and abused because we are Igbo. I recall it here to buttress the point that the Igbo have not had it easy in post war Nigeria and that the hate for the Igbo runs deeper than many care to admit. However, we do not need anyone to admit anything, that we know this fact is what is important, to us that is.

Growing up, I can’t recall my father telling us to be cautious, or to deny our Igboness, but we knew the ability to survive in a society hostile to our kind is our only defence. So, we learnt Hausa, learnt to recite the more common Islamic creeds and learnt to deny our Igboness. To avoid the Igbo stigma, we became Southern Kaduna, Benue, Cross River, Bendel or any other grouping, but never Igbo if we could help it.

Trayvon Martin: Beyond the Outcry

Everyone that pays attention to the media, especially international media from the west, must have at this point in time heard about Trayvon Martin. If by chance you happen to have crawled under a rock in Mars for the last one month and thus missed the whole commotion, Trayvon Martin is the 17-year-old boy shot and killed by George Zimmerman, a neighbourhood watch volunteer.

If you don’t know about the details of the case, as many still don’t, you might not think much of a headline that says “boy killed by guard”. But why should you think different, News headlines are replete with such news stories anyway. 


However, the Trayvon Martin case is unique in more ways than one. Not only is the late Trayvon Martin a minor, he was unarmed and not partaking in anything illegal at the time he was fatally shot by Zimmerman. Sad, you might say, another young boy at the wrong place at the wrong time. 


Yes, Trayvon Martin was at the wrong place at the wrong time. Wrong time and place for a black youth to be in 21^st century America. Wrong place to be, but right sort of place to get a bullet in the chest. A bullet fired by a white adult male who clearly outweighs him.

For those who have had the time in this dreary economic climate to follow the ruckus that emanated after the news sipped out that Mr. George Zimmerman, the killer of that innocent boy, was allowed to walk free after the fact, two truths ring clear: Zimmerman pulled the trigger of the gun that took the young boys life, the victim was armed with skittles and a cup of ice tea at the time of the shooting and was not doing anything untoward—except we follow George Zimmerman’s contention that the boy was walking aimlessly around the neighbourhood and agree with him that that constitutes a crime.

I feel profound sympathy for the family of the late Trayvon Martin and can only hope they find the strength to bear the loss, but the issue at hand is deeper than the death of a boy that made his parents proud.

I also feel sympathy for black Americans, who have had to contend with similar killings by high-handed and often times racially motivated white gunmen. I watch the news story and share the rage and confusion of those who ask that the boy’s killer face justice, not because I am of the same race with a majority of those I see carrying placards calling for justice, but because I never ever believed in extra-judicial killing by anyone.

As a Nigerian who has not personally experienced the blind racism that many allude to in the west, that one reads about, sees in movies and TV debates, I cannot claim to fully understand what it feels like to be discriminated against because of one’s colour. I know many say tribalism is similar, but I think it is only superficially so as one’s tribe cannot easily be decoded at first glance--one’s race is usually as clear as day.

However, as justified as my anger and that of millions around the world itching for justice is, I also know that getting justice for Trayvon Martin should not be the end of it. It is easy to march on the street and call for the arrest of one man, but forgetting that the arrest and possible imprisonment of one man does not change the situation on the ground that made his alleged crime possible. There is now greater need for people the world over to look at how we relate to ourselves. Should we continue hating because we don’t understand, or seek knowledge to make us better understand?

Across the world, people continue to hate more than they love, to kill more than they save and the destroy more than they build. Life, particularly human life is considered most sacred by religions world over. Yet, in this earth, man continues to see killing as a means of settling real and perceived disputes.

Trayvon Martin is just another notch on the pole that marks the billion untimely taken as a result of man’s resolve to take rather than give life to his kind and George Zimmerman, whether he pleads self-defence or not, broke the law of nature, he killed Trayvon Martin.