Lagos State Signage and Advertising Agency staff removed more than 50 campaign banners belonging to NDC House candidate Dr. Adebayo along major roads in the Surulere area, while banners of the ruling APC remained in place at the same locations.
On Sunday, LASAA operatives accompanied by security escorts carried out the removal operation along Akerele, Shitta, Ogunlana Drive, and Adeniran Ogunsanya roads. The agency’s personnel pulled down the materials bearing the candidate’s image and campaign messaging without issuing a prior public statement.
Adebayo, who contests the House seat on the NDC platform, is a trained ear, nose, and throat surgeon. She campaigns alongside Labour Party presidential candidate Peter Obi and All Progressives Grand Alliance-aligned candidate Rabiu Kwankwaso, running on a joint opposition front.
The candidate captured the operation on video and shared the footage publicly. The recordings showed LASAA staff working with security personnel at multiple locations across the affected roads, systematically taking down the banners one after another through the exercise.
After the removal exercise, Adebayo’s team conducted a search of the surrounding area. The team located the removed materials hidden at a spot nearby, after agents had pulled them from their positions along the roads during the operation that Sunday.
Adebayo described the operation as political intimidation, noting that the LASAA action came after Nigeria’s Independent National Electoral Commission had lifted its restrictions on campaign activities. The lifting of INEC’s campaign ban had legally permitted all registered candidates to display campaign materials publicly across the country.
She pointed out that APC banners remained standing at the same locations from which her own materials had been removed. No LASAA statement accounting for the selective removal of NDC materials while leaving APC banners was immediately available following the operation.
The candidate stated her intention to replace the removed banners with larger ones. She disclosed that the incident had strengthened rather than diminished her resolve to pursue the campaign, and she confirmed her team would move quickly to restore her campaign presence across the affected corridors.
Supporters of Adebayo responded to her video posts by rallying online. Many expressed solidarity with the candidate, and the footage she shared drew significant public attention to the removal operation and the contrasting treatment of NDC and APC campaign materials at the same sites.
LASAA is the agency responsible for regulating outdoor advertising and signage within Lagos State. The agency’s operatives were accompanied by security escorts during Sunday’s operation, a deployment that Adebayo cited in characterizing the exercise as an act of intimidation directed at her campaign.
The roads affected, Akerele, Shitta, Ogunlana Drive, and Adeniran Ogunsanya, fall within a commercially active and densely populated section of Lagos. Campaign banners along these corridors carry considerable visibility for candidates contesting Lagos seats in the upcoming election cycle.
Adebayo’s candidacy under the NDC places her in direct competition in a state where the APC holds significant electoral dominance. The differential treatment of campaign materials from both parties along the same roads sits at the center of her public allegation of political intimidation.
INEC’s decision to lift campaign restrictions had opened a lawful window for all registered candidates to mount outdoor campaign materials. Adebayo stated that her banners went up within that legal framework before LASAA operatives arrived with security and removed them on Sunday.
The NDC candidate confirmed her team found the removed materials concealed nearby after the LASAA operatives departed the area. She noted the concealment of the materials rather than their destruction or return as a detail that informed her characterization of the episode as politically motivated.
The removal of more than 50 NDC campaign banners in Lagos, against the backdrop of intact APC materials at identical locations, has drawn attention to the management of campaign signage in the state as the election period advances.
