Ekiti 2018: Nigerians’ trust of ‘tear-gassed Fayose’ incident, Police

The dramatic incident that happened in Ekiti State few days ago has once again shows the extent of tensed atmosphere characterizing Nigeria’s elections since independence. Like other countries in Africa, Nigeria is yet to learn from the negative consequences of political uncertainties before any election on economic growth and development, especially inflow of investors.

In the last 24 hours, news from Ekiti state, one of the states where elections will be held before the 2019 general elections, has been on the claimed ‘tear-gassing’ of Ayo Fayose, governor of the state. It was reported that the police attempt to stop the governor and his party’s supporters turned bloody, which led to the use of tear gas to disperse the crowd.

The governor perceived the police interference as an attempt to stop his party from winning the Saturday’s election. According to the police no rally would be allowed any more in the state unless expressly approved by the police. “We are not going to allow any unauthorised rally that can trigger violence in the state. You can see that the state is tensed up. “As law enforcement agent, we must be proactive and take actions that can prevent crisis rather than trying to quell it after it might have broken out,” Police representative said in an interview with a local newspaper.

Further analysis on the incident by Infoprations shows that popularity of the state governor has increased. In the last 24 hours, Nigerians’ interest in Ayo Fayose has reached over 5000%. The interest in the coming election was also on the rise, reaching 80% threshold.

Analysis equally indicates that the searched for Fayose tear gas moved in negative direction with the trust Nigerians had in politicians from 2008 to 2018, according to the Global Competitiveness Index. Infoprations’ analysis reveals 16.6% distrust for the incident, signifying the rate at which they did not believe in it. Despite this, Nigerians’ trust of the politicians in the Ekiti election was 74.3% while the reliability of the police services was 37.7%.