The Gladiators battling for entry into the Lagos Assembly

It seems like a foregone conclusion that the All Progressives Congress (APC) will coast to victory at the Lagos House of Assembly polls. In 2019, APC won all the 40 available seats in the house. Is it destined to happen again?

John Okoro Kome, who is running for the Ikeja constituency 1 seat under the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) doesn’t think so.

He believes he is the candidate to beat after battling up to the Court of Appeal to win his party’s nomination.

Mr Kome, who contested the 2021 Lagos East senatorial by-election under the African Democratic Congress, said it is time for the PDP to take over Lagos.

Another candidate trying to break the APC’s hold on the House is Tari Taylaur, who is running to represent Eti-Osa constituency 1 under the Youth party. Ms. Taylaur is the environment secretary for the Lekki Estate Residents Association (LERA).

In 2021, she contested for councillor in her Lekki ward but lost to a process she has described as rife “with so many irregularities.” Although she could not later overturn the result, she went to the tribunal “to show the public that we cannot continue to have such impunity and rigging and just all sorts of blatant irregularities in the local government elections.”

Now, under the Youth Party, she is trying again. “So, a lot of times, I feel tired, I feel like, oh my goodness, what have you gotten yourself into? Yes, a lot of times I feel very disillusioned by the system, the corruption, the impunity. But what do we do? Do we just roll over and die and do nothing?” She said in a recent interview.

Elizabeth Ekanem, a paediatric therapist and educator, is also vying for Eti-Osa constituency 1 seat under the African Democratic Congress. If elected, Ms Ekanem has vowed to be a voice for children living with disabilities, present bills for the rehabilitation and opening of industries and vocational centres in Lekki and lobby the state government to create waterways and drainages as part of efforts to ease the intensity of the seasonal Lekki flooding.

Comrade Opeyemi Benjamin Ogunlami, who is vying for the Kosofe Constituency 1 seat under the African Action Congress (AAC) has promised to set up an interest-free revolving loan for market women and artisans if elected into office.

But amid the renewed opposition, the APC is also not resting on its laurels. At a rally this week held at an open field by the Federal Government College, Ijanikin, along the Lagos-Badagry Expressway, the party said it welcomed an unspecified number of defectors from the PDP and the Action Alliance (AA).

“The election we will be having in February is when we will be electing our leader, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu and his vice, Kashim Shettima,” Director-General of the Lagos APC State Campaign Council, Senator Ganiyu Solomon, said.

“On the same day, we will elect our National Assembly candidates. Two weeks after, we will re-elect our Governor Sanwo-Olu and his deputy, Hamzat. Likewise, we are going to elect 40 members of the state House of Assembly.”

The APC is confident. It has many reasons to be.

Some of the candidates battling for entry into the Lagos State House of Assembly: