By Blessing Etim
The issue of vote buying is not fundamentally new to Nigeria’s electoral politics as people living in the rural areas of the country are more likely to participate in this ill act in organized elections.
The just concluded FCT council election was no exemption as reporters who monitored the process observed poor turnout of Abuja residents, vote buying, malfunctioning of Bimodal Voter Accreditation System (BVAS) as well as late arrival of officials of the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) at many polling units.
However, a fair percentage of FCT residents were at the polls to elect chairmen and councilors for the six area councils as voting officially commenced at 8:00 a.m. and ended at about 2:30 p.m. at various polling units on the 12th of February, 2022.
Results of the elections have been trickling in from some of the polling units as Six Chairmen and 62 Councilors are expected to emerge across the six area councils of the Federal Capital Territory.
The Area Councils where the exercise took place include: Abaji, Bwari, Gwagwalada, Kuje, Kwali, and Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC).
Voting however ended in many polling units as counting and collation of votes which was carried out by presiding officers in the presence of party agents and security agents, followed suit.
The results from the polling units will further be collated at the ward and local government levels, and the winner of the chairmanship elections will be announced at the headquarters of the various council areas.
In Bwari LGA, Kubwa ward, while most of the polling units in Kubwa Primary School were empty, some polling units had a large number of residents clustered in groups, going through the INEC voters’ lists to ascertain where they would cast their ballot.
