FCT polls’ postponement

Area Council elections in the Federal Capital Territory [FCT] that were earlier scheduled to hold on March 19 were suddenly postponed to April 9.  According to the Resident Electoral Commissioner [REC] Professor Jacob Jatau, the postponement was due to “difficulties in getting the required number of ad-hoc staff” to conduct the election. The three year […]

Area Council elections in the Federal Capital Territory [FCT] that were earlier scheduled to hold on March 19 were suddenly postponed to April 9.  According to the Resident Electoral Commissioner [REC] Professor Jacob Jatau, the postponement was due to “difficulties in getting the required number of ad-hoc staff” to conduct the election. The three year tenure of the current Area Council Chairmen and councillors is expected to expire on May 17 and preparations had been in top gear for several months to hold these elections, until the sudden postponement.
Ad-hoc staff are of course a key requirement for INEC to conduct elections. Even though the FCT Commissioner of Police Wilson Inalegwu has given assurances of adequate security during the Area Council elections, there were still reports that National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) members were pulling out of the election out of fear for their lives. Many parents and guardians were said to be instructing their wards to desist from election duties. This may have contributed to the inability to recruit enough ad hoc personnel for the election.
Still, it is nothing short of a major failing on INEC’s part that all preparations were not concluded in time. INEC claims that it will deploy 9,933 permanent and ad-hoc staff for the elections in which there are 1,020,799 registered voters. There is nowhere in the terms of service of NYSC that election duties are specified. Still, the FCT REC complained that NYSC was unable to provide the commission with the required number of ad-hoc staff and it had to “rush” to the University of Abuja to co-opt students. According to him, these students cannot be effectively trained and deployed in time for the earlier scheduled election date. However, several of the thirteen political parties fielding candidates in the FCT election have cried foul, saying the decision is unjustifiable as the Commission had three whole years in which to prepare for the elections.
This whole mess is a pointer to INEC that it must overhaul its processes to stop depending on an unreliable source of cheap labour.  Several parties claim they should be compensated by INEC because they spent a lot of money to campaign and sensitize their supporters. Peoples Democratic Party’s (PDP) National Secretary Chief Olisa Metuh said in a statement that the electoral umpire had no genuine excuse and the postponement was due to the fact that PDP and its candidates were set to sweep the polls. PDP’s FCT Chairman Yahaya Yunusa Suleiman, his Labour Party counterpart Rev. Comrade Joseph Indi and All Progressives Grand Alliance’s (APGA) FCT co-ordinator are all dissatisfied with INEC, and they said its decision had political undertones.
This charge rings true in many ears because there is no disputing the fact that these are not the best of times for the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in the FCT. Area Council workers have not been paid for over three months and many of them are on strike. Chances therefore were that APC will have problems if the elections were held as earlier scheduled.  This suspicion was further buttressed when APC’s FCT Chairman Alhaji Usman Abdulmalik said the postponement is a “welcome development.” He added that “this is not the first time elections have been postponed in the nation and it will give all parties time to go back and polish their plans for the elections.”
With the problems encountered in last weekend’s Rivers State re-run elections, the FCT Area Council Chairmanship and Councillorship elections will serve as another critical litmus test for INEC in its efforts to perfect the country’s electoral process. It is evident, going forward, that INEC must identify other sources of ad hoc staff and must mobilise them in good time, rather than sit smugly and wait for NYSC. Finally, the commission must at all times take key stakeholders into confidence in order to avoid charges of favouring one political party over others.