Taking a look at what role Lagos State will play in determining who becomes president in 2015.

Lagos State was created on May 27, 1967 by virtue of State (Creation and Transitional Provisions) Decree No. 14 of 1967, which restructured Nigeria’s Federation into 12 states. Prior to this, Lagos Municipality had been administered by the Federal Government through the Federal Ministry of Lagos

Affairs as the regional authority, while the Lagos City Council (LCC) governed the City of Lagos.

Lagos State Government
Barrister Babatunde Raji Fashola 

Lagos State has 20 Local Government Areas (LGAs) and 56 Local Council Development Areas (LCDAs). It is currently controlled by the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN). Its capital is Ikeja. 

Lagos state is the only state in South-western Nigeria and one of the few in the country never to have been governed by the People’s Democratic Party (PDP).  This is significant, because the political structures of the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) in Lagos are unparalleled and superior to that of any other party. 

Results of the 2011 Presidential Election in Lagos State

 

The PDP is present in Lagos and is clearly the strongest opposition party in the state. In 2011, Babatunde Fashola of ACN won re-election as governor of the Centre of Excellence by a total of 1,509,113 votes to beat Ade Dosunmu of the PDP to a distant second with 300,450 votes.  This shows that the ACN defeated the PDP by a multiple of 5. 

The pie chart above however shows an inverse situation in the presidential election on 2011 where the PDP defeated the ACN with about three times the votes.

                                                     

This is quite remarkable since these elections were conducted within a week of each other. 

The ACN is one of the strongest proponents of the APC merger and in fact, the Interim National Chairman of the APC is the current National Chairman of the ACN, Chief Bisi Akande. 

Looking forward to 2015, it is clear that the presidential election result will look more like the gubernatorial result of 2011 than the presidential election result of the same year.

However, Lagos state will likely vote somewhere between the two extremes because the situation is not exactly the same. Lagos has one of the highest literacy rates in Nigeria and a virile middle class. It is also a highly cosmopolitan city where a plethora of every tribe and religion can be found. 

Because of its diverse composition (and PDP structures on ground), Lagos will probably provide some significant votes to the PDP but the ACN’s influence will ensure an easy victory for the APC in Lagos come 2015. The APC should be able to win at least 60% of the total votes cast if not more without any difficulty.